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I  iimuiuii  I  ML  oi/\UL  uuun  i 

I  I 

I  Stories  of  Actors  and  of  | 

I  Stage  Life  'Behind  | 

I  the  Scenes  I 

I  BY  I 

I  I 

I  HENRY  M.  HYDE.  | 

I  I 


^      Itluatrattd  with  Photographs  from  Life      % 

I  I 


^ 


i 


I  i 


I  Commerciat  Distributing  Company  ^ 

I  Opera  House  Blocii  | 

I  Cairo,  Illinois  | 

I  P  I 


COPYRIGHT,   1903,  BY 
H.  R.  SCHUTTER 


The  Publishers  desire  to  aclcnowledge  the  courtesy 

of  the  "Chicago  Tribune."  in  the  columns  of 

which  paper  these  sketches  were 

originally  printed. 


CONTENTS. 

Page. 
How  Mansfield  Played  to  an  Audience 

of  One I 

Henrietta   Crostnan's   Hard    Fight    for 

Success II 

Superstitions  of  the  Stage 22 

Philosophy  of  Ezra  Kendall 32 

Adventures   of    the  Theatrical   Press 

Agent 48 

How  E.  H.  Sothern  Rehearses  Hamlet.  56 
William  Gillette — Playwright,  Actor...   62 

Duse,  the  Mysterious 72 

William  H.  Crane  Tells  Stage  Stories. .  82 

A  Chicago  Tragedy  of  Hamlet 92 

The  Making  of  an  Opera  Star 103 

The  Handsomest  Man  on  the  Stage 113 

How  David  Belasco  Works  and  Lives.  .123 


FOREWORD. 

Stage  life  is  interesting  to  most 
people  who  are  not  on  the  stage. 
That  is  the  only  reason  for  print- 
ing these  sketches  in  book  form. 
Written  day  by  day  for  the  columns 
of  a  newspaper  they  lack  finish  and 
exact  accuracy. 

If  the  stories  told  of  actors  are 
found  to  be  "good  stories",  if  they 
throw  any  light  on  that  fascinating 
mystery  which  lies  "behind  the 
scenes , ' '  they  have  served  their  only 
purpose. 

Unless  they  may  also  serve  to 
show,  for  the  benefit  of  "stage 
struck  "youngpeople, that  the  actor, 
like  most  other  men,  must  as  David 
Belasco  says,  "scratch  his  way 
through  a  mountain  to  success." 

H.  M.  H. 


Kll'IIAKl)   MAN.SFIKI.I). 


HOW   MANSFIELD    PLAYED    TO   AN 
AUDIENCE  OF  ONE. 


T  happened  during  one  of  the 
J_  long  runs  of  "Richard  III," 
in  New  York.  Richard  Mans- 
field, who  has  been  jDainted  by 
sensational  newspapers  as  an  ogre 
and  tyrant  to  the  members  of  his 
company,  was,  of  course,  in  the 
title  role.  The  part  of  one  of  the 
little  princes  who  go  later  to  the 
tower — the  Prince  of  Wales — was 
played  by  little  Margery  Stevens,  a 
sweet  little  maid  of  thirteen. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  run 
little  Margery  was  taken  ill.  Her 
mother  was  with  her — children  in 
the  Mansfield  company  are  always 
accompanied  by  their  mothers, 
when  they  have  mothers  available. 
Margery  was  taken  first  from  the 
theatrical  boarding  house  where 
she  had  been  living  to  a  hospital. 
In  the  beginning  it  did  not  seem 
that  her  illness  would  be  serious, 


2      THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

and  as  the  last  day  of  the  engage- 
ment drew  near  the  little  girl  was 
broken  hearted  at  the  thought  of 
being  left  behind.  So  the  terrible 
tyrant,  who  had  been  almost  every 
day  to  see  her  since  she  had  been 
out  of  the  cast,  arranged  to  have 
her  travel  with  the  company  to 
Philadelphia.  Incidentally  he  paid 
the  hospital  bill  and  the  fees  of 
the  attending  doctor. 

When  the  Mansfield  special 
reached  Philadelphia  Margery  was 
taken  directly  to  the  Presbyterian 
hospital  in  that  city.  The  doctors 
said  that  the  trip  had  done  her  no 
harm.  She  was  better  off,  in  fact, 
than  if  she  had  been  left  behind 
in  New  York  to  worry  and  fret. 
Her  mother  went  with  her  and  was 
established  in  an  adjoining  room, 
where  she  could  be  near  her  little 
daughter. 

In  some  strange  way,  which  it 
is  feared  some  people  will  never 
be  able  to  understand,  little  Miss 


AN  AUDIENCE  OF  ONE.  3 

Margery  had  formed  a  great  attach- 
ment for  Mr.  Mansfield.  Instead 
of  cowering  into  a  corner  and 
trembling  at  sight  of  him — as  we 
have  been  given  to  understand  the 
women  of  his  company  are  accus- 
tomed to  do — little  Margery  greet- 
ed him  always  with  a  pathetic  little 
smile.  And  he  came  to  see  her 
often,  every  day,  in  fact,  during 
the  stay  in  Philadelphia,  until — 
but  that  is  another  story. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  Miss  Mar- 
gery was  something  of  a  hero 
worshiper,  which — Emerson  and 
Thomas  Carlyle  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding — is  something  to 
be  ashamed  of.  At  any  rate,  when 
Mr.  Mansfield  came  out  to  the 
hospital  to  call  every  morning  she 
always  brightened  up  and  smiled 
and  talked  gayly  with  him.  Some- 
times, after  consultation  with  the 
doctors,  he  brought  some  little 
trifle  for  her  to  eat.  Always  he 
told  her  how  much  better  she  was 


4      THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

looking  and  how  hard  it  was  to 
get  along  without  her  in  the  cast. 
Part  of  that  was  acting,  of  course, 
though  the  plot  does  not  begin  to 
thicken  and  the  role  get  really 
difficult  until  later — the  second 
and  last  act. 

There  seemed  to  be  only  one 
thing  on  little  Margery's  mind. 
Almost  every  day  she  spoke  of  it. 

"I'm  sure  I'm  not  going  to  get 
well  in  time  to  see  you  in  'Beau 
Brummel,'  "  she  said  over  and 
over  again.  "I  wanted  to  see  that 
more  than  anything  else,  and  now 
I'm  going  to  be  disappointed." 

Which  was  foolish  of  her,  of 
course.  But  she  was  an  actress, 
and  only  thirteen  years  old,  so  one 
can  afford  to  be  charitable. 

"Why,  Margery,"  said  the  man 
who  is  reported  to  pull  handfuls 
of  hair  out  of  coiffures  he  thinks 
are  too  large,  "you'll  be  well  and 
strong  in  plenty  of  time  to  see 
'Beau  Brummel.'     You're  getting 


AN  AUDIENCE  OF  ONE.  5 

along  splendidly.  You're  looking 
much  better  than  you  did  yester- 
day, my  dear.  Don't  you  worry 
about  that.  I'll  promise  you,  on 
my  word  of  honor,  that  you  shall 
see  'Beau  Brummel.'  " 

But  that  was  before  the  brute 
saw  and  talked  with  the  doctors 
who  were  attending  the  little  girl. 

"How  soon  will  she  be  able  to 
get  about?"  he  asked. 

The  doctors  shook  their  heads. 
It  was  worse  than  a  critical  case, 
they  said.  The  little  girl  was 
down  with  her  last  illness. 

"She'll  never  get  up  again," 
they  said.  "There  isn't  one 
chance  in  a  million." 

Whereupon  the  villian  paid  a 
second  call  the  same  day  on  the 
little  girl  and  basely  deceived  her 
by  declaring  that  she  looked  the 
picture  of  health  and  that,  beyond 
the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  she  would 
be  able  to  see  'Beau  Brummel'  on 
the  first  night  of  its  production  in 


6      THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Philadelphia.  Which  was  heart- 
less, of  course,  for  he  knew  posi- 
tively at  the  time,  that  she  would 
never  get  out  of  that  little  white 
room  in  the  Presbyterian  hospital. 

The  days  wore  along.  They 
went  fast  for  the  actor,  with  all 
that  burden  of  deceit  on  his  mind. 
Every  hour  brought  him  nearer  to 
the  time  when  his  duplicity  must 
be  exposed  and  another  added  to 
the  long  list  of  stories  which  cir- 
culate through  the  newspapers  and 
reveal  him  in  his  true  character. 

For  the  little  girl  in  the  white 
hospital  bed  the  days  went  slow. 
In  spite  of  what  Mr.  Mansfield  told 
her  every  morning  when  he  called 
she  seemed  to  have  a  ort  of  pre- 
monition that  things  were  not  going 
well  with  her.  Perhaps  she  felt 
herself  growing  daily  weaker.  Per- 
haps she  heard  her  mother  sobbing 
softly  to  herself  in  the  adjoining 
room  after  a  consultation  with  the 
doctors.      Almost    every    day    she 


AN  AUDIENCE  OF  ONE.  7 

would  refer  to  Mansfield's  promise 
that  she  should  see  him  in  "Beau 
Brummel." 

"I  know  I  won't,  Mr.  Mans- 
field," she  would  say.  "See  how 
thin  and  weak  and  how  homely  I'm 
getting.  I  won't  be  up  in  time, 
I'm  sure  I  won't." 

Then  the  villain  would  plunge 
headlong  into  a  fresh  tissue  of  lies. 

"Margery,"  he  would  say,  "I 
never  in  my  life  saw  you  looking  so 
well .  Just  look  at  the  roses  in  your 
cheeks,"  holding  up  a  hand  mir- 
ror, "and  talk  to  me  about  looking 
thin  and  homely!"  The  roses 
were  purely  imaginary,  but  Mar- 
gery, though  she  was  but  thirteen, 
was  still  a  woman,  and — how- 
ever, nobody  can  attempt  to  defend 
a  bare  faced  deception  of  that  kind. 
A  little  photograph  of  Margery  got 
itself  printed,  and  that  also  was 
used  to  aid  in  the  deceit.  It  really 
was  a  dreadful  state  of  affairs.  It 
should  have  been  exposed  long  ago. 


8      THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Finally  the  evening  came  on 
which  "Beau  Brummel"  was  to  be 
presented.  That  morning  Mr. 
Mansfield  failed  to  call.  Perhaps 
he  realized  that  the  day  of  reckon- 
ing had  come  and  it  was  useless  to 
try  to  keep  up  the  game  any  longer. 
It  was  not  a  happy  day  for  Mar- 
gery. She  lay  and  mourned  all 
day  at  the  loss  of  all  her  hopes. 

Towards  evening  Mr.  Mansfield 
came  into  the  room,  after  Margery's 
mother  had  told  her  he  was  there 
and  had  propped  her  up  in  bed  with 
a  couple  of  pillows. 

' '  Yes , ' '  the  doctor  had  said , ' '  you 
might  as  well.  Nothing  can  make 
much  difference  now.  Do  it  if  you 
think  it  will  give  her  any  pleasure. ' ' 

So  Mansfield  came  in.  It  was 
a  cold  night  out  of  doors  and  he 
wore  a  huge  ulster  which  fell  to  his 
feet. 

"Well,  Margery,"  he  said. 

"And  I'm  not  going  to  see 
'Beau  Brummel'  after  all,"  broke 


AN  AUDIENCE  OF  ONE.  9 

out  the  little  girl.  "To-night's 
the  night,  and  I'm  too  sick  to  get 
up  at  all.     I  knew  I  should  be." 

"But,  Margery,  I  promised  on 
my  word  of  honor  that  you  should 
see  'Beau  Brummel.'  " 

"It's  not  your  fault,  Mr.  Mans- 
field, that  I  should  be  so  sick.  You 
can't  help  that." 

"Wait  a  minute,  Margery,"  said 
the  actor. 

Mansfield's  dresser  came  into  the 
little  room  and  took  his  great  ulster 
and  his  hat  and  stick. 

Before  the  wondering  eyes  of  the 
sick  child,  propped  up  in  bed, 
stood  the  great  "Beau  Brummel," 
lace  handkerchief,  tasseled  cane, 
tortoise  shell  snuff  box,  silk  stock- 
ings, and  all. 

From  beginning  to  end  the  play 
was  rehearsed,  Mansfield  in  turn 
taking  all  the  parts  and  telling  the 
whole  story.  He  finished  Justin  time 
to  drive  back  to  the  theatre  and  play 
the  part  before  a  crowded  house. 


10   THROUGH  THK  STAGE  DOOR. 

Little  Margery  somehow  forgave 
him  for  all  the  deception  he  had 
practiced  on  her.  In  fact,  it  did 
not  seem  to  occur  to  her  that  she 
had  been  deceived  or  ill  treated  at 
all.  She  died  before  the  Mansfield 
engagement  in  Philadelphia  was 
over. 


HENRIETTA  CROSMAN'S  HARD 
FIGHT  FOR  SUCCESS. 


O 


A« 


NCE  upon  a  time — which  is 
always  the  polite  way  to 
speak  of  an  incident  in  the 
career  of  an  actress  who  is 
more  than  20 — once  upon  a  time 
Miss  Henrietta  Crosman — and  that 
was  her  real  name  before  she  mar- 
ried— was  called  upon  to  decide 
between  painting  plaques  and  play- 
ing parts  on  the  stage.  The  daub- 
ing of  red  roses  and  scarlet  sumac 
bunches  on  china  plates  was  a  bird 
in  the  hand  that  was  laying  golden 
eggs  of  such  size  and  number  that 
it  seemed  almost  foolish  to  give  it 
up  for  the  bird  in  the  stage  bush — 
though  the  latter  wore  more  glit- 
tering plumage. 

It  happened  this  way: 

Miss  Crosman's  father  was  Maj. 

Crosman,  U.  S.  A.  (retired).     His 

daughter  was  15,  and  large  for  her 

age.     She  had  talent  in  two  direc- 


12   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

tions;  she  could  paint  pretty  pic- 
tures and  she  had  a  fine,  high 
soprano  voice.  So  the  first  choice 
was  between  Art  and  Music. 

The  major  and  her  mother  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  family  favored 
Art.  The  girl  herself  thought  she 
would  rather  sing  in  grand  opera 
than  decorate  any  number  of  china 
tea  sets.  So  the  whole  family  pulled 
up  stakes  and  departed  for  Paris  on 
the  major's  half  pay.  There  a 
famous  teacher  of  vocal  music  put 
Henrietta's  voice  to  the  test,  and, 
declaring  that  the  question  of  his 
possible  fees  cut  no  figure  in  his 
decision,  announced  that  she  was 
the  future  Patti.  So  they  all 
settled  down  in  a  French  pension 
— which  is  a  word  you  use  when 
you  want  to  show  that  you  have 
been  to  Europe,  and  means  board- 
ing house — and  Henrietta  went  to 
school  to  the  singing  master. 

After  a  year 's  study  arrangements 
were  made  for  her  operatic  debut. 


FIGHT  FOR  SUCCESS.  13 

A  week  before  the  date  set  Miss 
Crosman  caught  a  bad  cold.  The 
singing  master  kept  right  on  forcing 
her  to  sing,  and  a  day  or  two  be- 
fore she  was  to  burst  upon  an  aston- 
ished world  her  voice  broke  down. 
Eminent  throat  specialists  were 
called  in.  They  did  no  good.  The 
operatic  career  had  to  be  abandoned . 
What  might  have  been,  except  for 
that  cold,  is  still  a  something  that 
Miss  Crosman  doesn't  like  to  be 
reminded  of. 

Then,  still  on  the  major's  half 
pay,  which  the  singing  masters  and 
the  throat  specialists  and  the  pen- 
sion had  badly  strained,  the  Cros- 
man family  moved  back  to  Youngs- 
town,  O. 

In  addition  to  teaching  her  how 
to  use  her  voice,  the  singing  mas- 
ter had  taught  the  16  year  old  Hen- 
rietta something  about  acting.  So, 
when  Youngstown  began  to  pall 
after  Paris,  she  decided  she  would 
try  her  talent  on  the  dramatic  stage. 


]4    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

And,  finally,  she  got  an  offer  of  an 
engagement  with  a  little  company 
over  at  Pittsburg. 

The  only  thing  that  stood  in  the 
way  of  an  acceptance  was  the  lack 
of  money  to  buy  railroad  tickets 
and  costumes,  and  to  pay  board 
while  the  play  was  in  rehearsal. 
And  then  Miss  Crosman  got  busy 
with  her  brush.  That  was  the 
china  painting  age,  when  all  over 
the  country  the  disease  was  spread- 
ing, and  Miss  Crosman  took  advant- 
age of  it.  She  decorated  defense- 
less plaques  and  cream  pitchers  and 
sent  them  to  be  sold  to  Philadelphia , 
Pittsburg,  and  other  art  centers. 
What  is  more  to  the  point,  they 
did  sell,  and  the  demand  was  so 
great  that  within  a  comparatively 
few  weeks  the  young  artist  had 
taken  in  enough  money  to  pay  her 
railroad  fare,  buy  her  costumes,  and 
provide  for  her  board  while  the  play 
was  under  rehearsal. 

Then  came  the  crisis.  The  plaque 


FIGHT  FOR  SUCCESS.  15 

painting  game  was  such  a  profit- 
able one  that  it  seemed  a  shame  to 
give  it  up  for  an  uncertainty.  But 
the  choice  was  made  and  Miss 
Crosman  went  to  Pittsburg  and  the 
stage.  Her  success  was  ahnost  im- 
mediate, and  it  was  great.  From 
Bartley  Campbell's  "White  Slave" 
company  she  went  to  Daly's,  where 
she  played  for  the  greater  part  of 
one  season.  Then  Daniel  Froh- 
man  employed  her  to  play  good 
parts  with  his  Lyceum  company  in 
such  plays  as  "The  Wife."  The 
next  season  Daniel  loaned  the  ser- 
vices of  Miss  Crosman  to  Brother 
Charles,  who  wanted  her  to  be  lead- 
ing lady  in  "Charles  Frohman's 
Comedians."  In  those  days  both 
the  Lyceum  and  the  Comedians 
were  at  the  height  of  their  fame, 
and  Henrietta  Crosman  made  a 
great  hit  in  such  plays  as  "Glori- 
ana."  Her  name  then  was  almost 
as  well  known  on  Broadway  as  it 
is  now. 


16   THROUGH  THK  STAGE  DOOR. 

But  Miss  Crosman  fell  ill.  For 
a  season  or  two  she  was  not  able  to 
appear  in  any  production,  and  when 
she  finally  recovered  her  health  she 
found — what  many  an  actor  and 
actress  have  since  found — that  the 
theatre-going  public  had  forgotton 
even  her  name.  She  had  hard  work 
to  get  an  engagement  of  any  kind. 
Again  the  stock  company  of  Pitts- 
burg opened  its  doors  to  her.  Then 
she  went  to  Denver,  where  she  still 
was  playing  in  stock.  But  by  this 
time  she  had  married  Maurice 
Campbell,  who  is  still  her  husband 
and  manager.  She  had  already 
read  and  been  greatly  taken  with 
"Mistress  Nell,"  George  Hazle- 
ton's  play,  and  the  firm  of  Cros- 
man &  Campbell — wife  and  husband 
— was  saving  up  money  for  its  pro- 
duction. 

Finally  they  got  together  enough 
coin  to  make  a  modest  little  pro- 
duction. They  were  booking  then 
through     the     theatrical     trust. 


II  I:N  KI KTTA    CU<  )f?M  AN . 

SEC  PACE    n 


FIGHT  FOR  SUCCESS.  17 

The  production  was  a  go.  It  made 
money  from  the  start  and  most  of 
the  money  was  put  right  back  again 
into  the  show — better  actors  were 
employed  and  better  scenery  was 
painted. 

And  then,  when  the  Crosman 
company  was  over  in  Canada,  the 
trust  decided  that  it  couldn't  do 
any  more  business  with  Campbell 
and  his  star  wife.  Campbell  had 
something  like  $500  in  cash  and 
engagements  for  a  couple  of  weeks 
ahead  of  him.  He  was  notified  of 
the  decision  of  the  trust  one  after- 
noon in  New  York  and  he  was 
walking  up  Broadway  the  same 
afternoon  white  in  the  face  and 
decidedly  down  in  the  mouth. 

Happily — some  people  would  say 
providentially — he  ran  into  one  of 
the  Stires  brothers,  who  controlled 
the  Bijou  theatre.  Mr.  Stires  was 
also  ''up  against  it."  His  current 
production  was  "a  frost. ' '  For  all 
that  he  could  see  his  house  would 


18   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

"have  to  be  dark"  for  a  couple 
of  weeks.  Campbell  told  his  trou- 
bles to  Stires  and  Stires  was  equally 
eloquent  in  return.  So  "Mistress 
Nell"  came  to  the  Bijou  and  made 
a  lot  of  money.  All  the  New  York 
dramatic  critics  came  and  saw  and 
almost  all  had  forgotton — if  they 
ever  knew — that  the  new  star  was 
really  an  old  New  York  favorite. 

Mrs.  Campbell  is  distinctly  a 
woman's  woman.  One  of  her 
strongest  passions  is  ice  cream  soda. 
She  is  also  fond  of  chocolate  creams 
and  she  is  on  record  as  publicly 
declaring  that  she  much  prefers  to 
play  to  an  audience  of  women. 
They  understand  more  quickly  and 
are  more  sympathetic  and  appre- 
ciative, Mrs.  Campbell  thinks. 

But  her  attitude  towards  her  own 
sex  has  got  Mrs.  Campbell  into 
more  or  less  serious  trouble,  or,  at 
least,  annoyance.  In  the  Christ- 
mas number  of  one  of  the  theatrical 
weeklies  she  wrote  a  siirned  article 


FIGHT  FOR  SUCCESS.  19 

setting  forth  her  views  on  the  stage 
as  a  career  for  young  women. 

"Why,"  asked  Mrs.  Campbell, 
"should  people  refer  to  a  young 
v/oman  as  'stage  struck'?  If  she 
wants  to  be  a  trained  nurse  they 
don't  call  her  'nurse  struck.'  If 
she  decides  to  be  a  painter  they  do 
not  call  her  as  'palette  struck.' 
'Stage  struck'  is  an  insult  to  the 
profession.  In  my  opinion  no 
career  offers  as  great  opportunities 
and  as  great  rewards  to  a  young 
woman  as  that  of  an  actress — 
always  providing  that  she  has  tal- 
ent." 

Mrs.  Campbell  went  on  to  say 
that,  in  her  opinion,  young  women 
of  character  and  real  talent  should 
be  encouraged  to  go  on  the  stage. 
The  stage  needs  them  and  it  will 
reward  them  well,  if  they  have 
ability  and  are  willing  to  work  hard. 

The  result  of  that  article  has  been 
that  wherever  Henrietta  Crosman 
has   appeared   since   every   "stage 


20   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

struck"  young  woman  who  has 
heard  of  her  attitude  and  views  has 
first  written  and  then  tried  to  see  her. 

If  she  attempted  to  see  half  of  the 
dramatic  aspirants  who  are  anxious 
to  meet  her  she  would  have  no  time 
to  do  anything  else. 

Mrs.  Campbell  has  two  sons.  One 
of  them  is  at  school  in  New  York. 
The  other  is  a  little  chap  of  4  or  5, 
who  usually  travels  with  his  mother 
under  the  charge  of  a  nurse. 

She  is  a  domestic  woman,  so  far 
as  the  necessities  of  her  profession 
will  permit  her  to  be.  Never  once 
during  her  stage  career  has  she 
ever  taken  part  in  one  of  those 
after-the-show  suppers  which  are  so 
popular  in  and  out  of  the  profes- 
sion. When  the  last  curtain  has 
gone  down  she  usually  is  joined  by 
her  husband  and  one  or  two  mem- 
bers of  her  executive  staff.  More 
often  than  not  she  will  not  take 
her  carriage  home,  but  will  walk, 
if   the    distance  is   not   too  great, 


FIGHT   FOR   SUCCESS.  21 

stopping,  perhaps,  to  drink  a  glass 
of  her  beloved  ice  cream  soda  on  the 
way.  Her  afternoons  she  devotes 
largely  to  her  son  or  to  reading  one 
of  the  many  manuscripts  which  are 
submitted  to  her.  Mrs.  Campbell 
does  not  believe  that  an  actress  can 
do  justice  to  her  art  and  at  the  same 
time  devote  much  time  to  society. 


u 


SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  STAGE. 

O,  I  have  no  patience  with 
the  people  who  are  super- 
stitious about  ever>'thing 
they  see  and  meet.    There's 


N 


no  reason  in  the  word  why  actors 
should  be  any  more  superstitious 
than  any  other  class  of  people.  As 
for  me,  I  have  no  more  fear  of — . 
For  heaven's  sake,  Jim,  don't  walk 
under  that  ladder!" 

That  bit  of  quotation  from  a  con- 
versation between  two  actors  fairly 
represents  the  attitude  of  the 
stronger  minded  members  of  the 
theatrical  profession  towards  the 
multitudinous  superstitions  which 
rule  the  stage.  As  for  the  average 
actor,  he  is  probably  the  most 
superstitious  person  in  the  world. 
There  are  a  large  number  of  super- 
stitions which  are  generally  believed 
in.  In  addition  almost  every  actor 
and  actress  has  a  lot  of  individual 
superstitions  of  his  own. 


STAGE  SUPERSTITIONS.  23 

Peacock's  feathers  are  always  ter- 
ribly unlucky  about  a  theater. 
Even  a  picture  of  a  peacock's 
feather  is  enough  to  ruin  the 
chances  of  a  play  of  an  actor.  It 
would  be  hard  to  convince  any 
member  of  the  theatrical  profession 
that  the  real  cause  of  the  failure  of 
the  Lincoln  theater,  in  Chicago, 
was  not  the  fact  that  in  the  frieze 
which  ran  about  the  inside  of  the 
house  peacock's  feathers  formed 
one  of  the  chief  factors. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  act  of 
the  Powers  brothers  in  vaudeville 
was  the  blowing  into  the  air  of  a 
peacock's  feather,  which  was  finally 
allowed  to  descend  and  balance  on 
the  nose  of  the  performer.  When 
the  Trocadero  theatre  was  first 
opened  the  Powers  brothers  were 
on  the  bill.  The  manager  of  the 
house  came  to  a  rehearsal  and  saw 
the  peacock's  feather  blown  up 
into  the  air.  Immediately  he  gave 
a  shriek  of  horror  and  grabbed  the 


24   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

performer  by  the  arm .  ' '  Heavens , ' ' 
he  said,  "do  you  want  to  queer  the 
show?  Cut  out  that  hoodoo." 
And  the  feather  of  ill  omen  was  cut 
out. 

Cats  about  a  theatre  are  good 
luck.  If  you  meet  a  black  cat  on 
the  street  on  the  way  to  an  open- 
ing performance  you  need  have  no 
further  fear.  The  piece  will  make 
a  great  hit.  Almost  every  theater 
in  town  harbors  a  pet  cat,  and  it  is 
almost  a  matter  of  religion  with  all 
theatrical  people  never  to  interfere 
with  its  pleasure  in  any  way.  '  Often 
when  grand  opera  is  on  at  the  Audi- 
torium the  theatre  cat  will  take  a 
notion  to  walk  across  the  stage  in 
the  middle  of  the  scene .  But  neither 
Melba  nor  De  Reszke  would  venture 
for  anything  to  stop  it,  nor  would 
they  allow  a  stage  hand  to  inter- 
fere. To  interfere  with  a  cat  would 
be  almost  fatal.  Everybody  who 
knows  anything  knows  that!  A 
little  one  eyed  gray  cat  makes  its 


STAGE  SUPERSTITIONS.         25 

home  back  of  the  stage  at  the  Chi- 
cago opera  house.  The  vaudeville 
performers  are  simply  delighted  if 
it  takes  a  notion  to  come  down- 
stairs under  the  stage  and  visit 
them  in  their  dressing  rooms.  If 
it  condescends  to  go  to  sleep  on 
the  clothes  in  their  open  trunks 
they  are  tickled  half  to  death. 
That  means  a  long  and  steady  run 
of  good  luck.  Foolish?  Why,  it 
never  fails.  They  will  quote  you 
a  string  of  instances  as  long  as  your 
arm.  Suppose  the  cat  happens  to 
go  to  sleep  on  the  costume  you 
wear  in  your  next  appearance. 
Wake  it  up?  Not  for  the  world. 
Put  on  some  other  clothes,  but  do 
not  disturb  the  cat.  More  than 
once  a  soubrette  has  gone  on  in  the 
wrong  costume  rather  than  rouse 
the  cat  from  its  slumbers. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  must 
never  carry  a  cat  with  you  on  the 
road.  Traveling  cats  are  not  only 
not  harbingers  of  good  luck,  but 


26  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

instances havebeen  known  where — . 

When  a  player  on  his  way  to  the 
theater  to  appear  in  a  first  perform- 
ance of  a  new  play  meets  a  cross 
eyed  man  he  might  as  well  go  back 
home  and  give  it  up.  He  is  cer- 
tainly doomed  to  failure.  It  never 
fails.  Of  course,  he  should  also, 
as  soon  as  he  sees  the  cross  eyed 
person,  cross  the  forefinger  and  the 
middle  finger  of  his  right  hand  and 
spit  over  them.  That  may  help 
some,  but  of  course  it  won't  take 
the  curse  off  altogether.  Nothing 
will  do  that. 

Some  extremely  good  actresses 
and  actors  are  looked  upon  as 
Jonahs  by  theatrical  managers. 
Sometimes  such  unfortunate  peo- 
ple have  happened  to  be  connected 
with  a  number  of  unsuccessful  pro- 
ductions. Sometimes  there  is  not 
even  that  much  foundation  for  the 
reputation  they  possess.  But  once 
an  actor  becomes  tainted  with  the 
hoodoo   or  Jonah    superstition    he 


STAGE  SUPERSTITIONS.  27 

had  better  quit  the  business  at  once, 
for  he  will  find  it  practically  impos- 
sible to  get  an  engagement. 

"Well,"  you  will  hear  one  man- 
ager saying  to  another  who  has  just 
put  on  an  unsuccessful  production, 
"well,  you  might  have  known  it! 
Didn't  you  know  better  than  to 
take out  with  you?" 

They  are  talking  in  dead  serious- 
ness, too. 

Certain  plays  share  with  certain 
actors  the  reputation  of  ill  omen. 
There  are  half  a  dozen  pieces  which 
competent  judges  pronounce  ex- 
tremely strong  which  no  manager 
will  touch  because  of  it. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  mention  the 
names  of  any  of  these  hoodoo 
players,  though  some  of  them  would 
be  quite  familiar  to  the  public. 

Actors  share  with  the  rest  of  the 
world  all  the  common  Friday,  thir- 
teen, and  umbrella  superstitions. 
But  they  go  further  than  most  peo- 
ple in  the  umbrella  line. 


28  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Down  at  the  Coliseum  gardens 
there  were  several  huge  Japanese 
umbrellas  used  in  the  decorations. 
One  day  one  of  the  performers — a 
Frenchman,  by  the  way,  as  if  to 
show  that  superstitions  are  inter- 
national— came  to  Manager  Wood 
in  great  distress. 

"It  has  rained  every  day  since 
I've  been  here,"  he  said,  "and  it'll 
keep  on  raining  just  so  long  as  you 
keep  those  open  umbrellas  in  the 
house.  Take 'em  out  quick  before 
you  hoodoo  the  weather  for  all  sum- 
mer. ' ' 

When  an  actor  gets  home,  no 
matter  how  hard  it  has  been  rain- 
ing, he  must  never  open  his  um- 
brella to  let  it  dry  off.  That  would 
be  deadly.  Nor  must  he  lay  it  on 
the  bed,  even  unopened.  That 
signifies  something  terrible. 

Even  the  unsentimental  men  who 
handle  the  business  end  of  travel- 
ing companies  have  their  supersti- 
tions.    Always  when  the  doors  are 


STAGE  SUPERSTITIONS.  29 

open  in  a  small  town  the  men  with 
the  passes  are  first  in  line.  But 
they  are  never  allowed  to  go  in  till 
there  is  some  money  in  the  house. 
If  a  single  deadhead  goes  in  ahead 
of  the  people  who  have  bought 
their  tickets  on  the  opening  night 
of  a  new  production  the  piece  is 
foredoomed  to  financial  failure. 

When  your  train  is  pulling  into 
a  town  where  you  are  to  show  and 
you  see  a  graveyard  on  the  left 
hand  side  of  the  train  you  will  play 
to  bad  business.  If  the  graveyard 
is  on  the  other  side  of  the  track  it 
don't  signify  anything  in  particular. 
Of  course  if  it  is  on  the  left  hand 
side  and  you  don't  see  it  the  sign 
amounts  to  nothing,  so  it  is  wise 
as  you  run  into  a  town  to  look  out 
of  the  right  hand  window  or  keep 
your  eyes  inside  the  car. 

If,  when  you  are  setting  up  the 
canvas  on  a  lot  for  a  circus,  a  yel- 
low cur  dog  appears  and  hangs 
around  you'll  have  doggoned  bad 


30   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

luck.  Try  it  and  see  if  that  isn't 
good  doctrine. 

You  musn't  whistle  in  a  stage 
dressing  room .  You  may  be  a  good 
whistler,  with  a  cheerful  tune,  but 
the  first  note  is  likely  to  drive  every 
other  actor  out  into  the  night. 
There  are  few  better  ways  to  Jonah 
an  act. 

Some  actors  insist  that  all  their 
stage  shoes  must  be  kept  on  the 
floor.  If  they  were  put  on  a  table 
or  in  a  cupboard  it  would  ruin 
them.  But  in  some  theaters  keep- 
ing shoes  on  the  floor  is  almost  as 
bad,  for  rats  like  leather  and  many 
a  good  pair  of  shoes  has  been  ruined 
by  them. 

Almost  every  player  has  some 
little  piece  of  jewelry  or  wearing 
apparel  which  is  his  or  her  mascot. 
Some  people  are  superstitious  about 
an  old  wig  band  and  will  use  it 
again  and  again,  having  repeated 
new  wigs  attached  to  the  same  old 
band.     One  actress  at  tlie  Illinois 


STAGE  SUPERSTITIONS.         31 

theatre,  in  Chicago,  was  recently 
discovered  in  tears  because  some- 
thing had  become  of  her  old  hare's 
foot  with  which  she  applied  rouge 
to  her  cheeks. 

Here  are  some  more  bad  luck 
signs:  A  yellow  clarionet  in  the 
orchestra ;  to  pass  through  a 
funeral;  to  pass  another  actor  on 
the  stairs;  to  speak  the  "tag" — 
that  is  the  last  line  of  a  play — at  a 
rehearsal ;  to  look  through  the  hole 
in  the  curtain  to  count  up  the  house . 

And  after  all  is  there  anybody  in 
any  line  of  business  who  has  not  a 
lot  of  pet  little  superstitions  of  his 
own? 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EZRA  KENDALL. 

NTIL  he  recently  started  out 
to  star  in  "The  Vinegar 
Buyer"  Ezra  Kendall  was 
the  most  popular   and  the 


U 


f^^ 


highest  paid  monologue  artist  on 
the  vaudeville  stage.  Managers 
were  glad  to  pay  him  $500  a  week 
for  twenty  minutes  of  talk  twice  a 
day.  Twenty  years  ago  he  was 
working  as  hostler  in  a  country 
livery  stable  at  $15  a  month.  Here 
is  his  own  story: 

"I  was  stranded  at  a  little  hotel 
at  Portlands ville,  N.  Y.  The  land- 
lord of  the  hotel  was  Ira  Stevens. 
Ira  and  I  were  great  friends.  He 
stuck  close  to  me,  because  he  was 
afraid  if  he  didn't  I  might  jump  my 
board  bill.  Finally  he  and  I  struck 
a  great  idea. 

"Portlandsville  is  in  the  center 
of  the  hop  country.  They  grow 
nothing  up  there  but  hops  and  poli- 
ticians.    When  the  hops  get  ripe 


EZKA  KENDALL. 


EZRA     KENDALL.  33 

they  have  to  be  picked  in  a  hurry. 
Ten  days  is  the  limit.  So  the  hop 
growers  go  down  to  New  York  and 
to  all  the  cities  roundabout  and  hire 
every  man  they  can  find  to  pick 
hops.  In  the  hop  picking  season 
whole  trainloads  of  hobos  are  run 
into  that  country,  and  every  house 
is  filled. 

"Well,  Ira  and  I  conceived  the 
idea  that  if  we  would  bring  a  show 
up  there  and  play  through  the  hop 
country  in  the  hop  picking  season 
we'd  make  our  everlasting  fortunes. 
Ira  trusted  me  for  my  board  bill 
and  I  went  down  to  the  city  and 
organized  the  company.  It  con- 
sisted of  five  people.  We  billed  it 
as  "The  Criterion  Comedy  Com- 
pany— Four  Distinct  Entertain- 
ments in  One — Variety,  Comedy, 
Minstrelsy,  and  Drama' — and  there 
were  five  of  us  to  carry  out  the  pro- 
gram. One  and  a  quarter  people 
to  each  of  the  four  distinct  varie- 
ties.    Ira  furnished  an  old  bus  for 


34   THROUGH  THE  STAGE   DOOR. 

the  transportation  of  tlie  company 
from  one  little  town  to  the  next, 
and  an  even  older  wagon  in  which 
our  alleged  baggage  was  carried. 
But  after  two  weeks  our  scheme 
proved  a  failure.  We  found  that 
after  working  hard  in  the  fields  all 
day  the  hop  pickers  preferred  to  go 
to  a  dance,  if  they  went  anywhere 
except  to  bed. 

"I've  got  enough  of  the  show 
business,'  said  Ira  at  the  end  of  the 
second  week;    'here's  where  I  quit.' 

"That  left  me  to  get  along  as 
well  as  I  could.  We  had  a  date  at 
lyawrence,  N.  Y.,  and  Ira  finally 
agreed  to  drive  us  over  there.  The 
hall  where  we  were  to  show  was 
over  the  hotel.  When  we  drove  up 
to  the  hotel  there  wasn't  a  human 
being  in  sight.  Not  a  soul  in  the 
hotel  office  or  on  the  streets.  We 
thought  we  had  struck  the  deserted 
village  for  a  fact.  Pretty  soon  in 
ran  a  man  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  all 
out  of  breath  and  covered  with  mud. 


EZRA     KENDALL.  35 

"  'Thcj-'ve  got  l]im,"said  he  to 
me. 

"  'Have  they?'  I  asked.  'Where 
did  they  catch  him?' 

"  'Well,' said  the  stranger, 'they 
chased  him  down  Main  street  and 
throngh  Hen  Waller's  wood  lot  into 
the  barn.  Then  out  of  the  barn 
and  over  to  the  Widow  Harlan's 
turnip  field.  He  scart  the  Bellows 
children  half  to  death  and  they 
finally  ketched  him  down  by  his 
own  house.  His  wife  grabbed  hold 
of  his  coattail  and  held  on  tell  the 
sheriff  come  up.' 

"  'Did  he  put  up  a  fight?'  I  says. 

"  'No,'  says  my  friend.  'Bill's 
harmless,  I  guess.  He  just  grinned 
atthesheriff  and  says,  "Well,  boys, 
I  hope  you  had  as  much  fun  as  I 
did."  ' 

"  'Did  they  find  the  goods  on 
him?'  I  asked. 

" 'Huh?' says  the  stranger.  'The 
goods?  Bill's  no  thief .  He's  just 
touched  in  the  head .     Yesterday  he 


36  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

escaped  from  the  asylum  and  come 
over  here  to  home  and  we  all  have 
been  out  to  catch  him.' 

"In  a  few  minutes  the  sheriff  and 
Bill  came  into  the  hotel, with  about 
200 people  after  them.  Practically 
every  inhabitant  of  the  village  was 
in  the  crowd  and  Bill  was  laughing 
and  joking  with  them  all. 

"Pretty  soon  it  got  time  for  us 
to  open  our  show  upstairs.  We 
strung  the  cambric  curtain,  lit  the 
kerosene  lamps,  and  sat  the  little 
table  for  the  ticket  seller  near  the 
door.  But  nobody  came  up  and 
bought  tickets.  The  presence  of 
the  captured  Bill  down  in  the  hotel 
office  was  a  bigger  show  than  ours. 
Finally  I  was  seized  with  a  brilliant 
idea.  I  went  down  stairs  and 
invited  Bill  and  the  sheriff  who  had 
him  in  charge  to  come  up  and 
attend  our  show  free  of  charge. 
That  struck  both  Bill  and  the  sheriff 
as  a  fine  plan,  so  they  came  up,  and 
almost  everybody  in  town  tagged  up 


EZRA     KENDALI,.  Z7 

after  them.  Of  course,  we  charged 
everybody  but  the  two  chief  per- 
sonages a  quarter  apiece  to  get  in 
and  we  managed  to  work  up  a  $15 
house,  which  was  mighty  good  for 
those  days. 

' '  But  our  audience  hardly  glanced 
at  the  stage.  They  all  looked  at 
Bill.  Bill  may  have  been  crazy, 
but  he  laughed  at  all  the  right  places 
in  the  show,  and  whenever  he  would 
laugh  all  the  rest  of  them  would 
shake  their  heads  and  say,  'Poor 
Bill!     Ain't  it  too  bad  he's  crazy?' 

"Finally,  at  the  end  of  Septem- 
ber, our  tour  came  to  a  necessary 
end.  I  had  just  money  enough  to 
pay  railroad  fares  for  four  people 
from  the  little  town  we  were  at 
down  to  Portlandsville,  ten  miles 
away.  The  train  left  for  Portlands- 
ville at  noon,  and  I  had  just  time 
to  drive  down  to  Portlandsville  and 
borrow  some  money  from  my  old 
friend ,  Ira  Stevens ,  proprietor  of  the 
hotel.     With  that  money  I  planned 


3S    THROUGH  THE  STAGfC  DOOR. 

to  buy  tickets  for  the  five  of  us  and 
meet  the  other  four  at  the  station 
when  the  train  pulled  into  Port- 
landsville.  The  road  were  bad  and 
we  had  to  drive  slow.  Just  as  we 
drove  intoPortlandsville  I  heard  the 
train  whistle.  I  saw  I  hadn't  time 
to  see  Ira  and  get  the  tickets  in 
time  to  catch  the  train.  Sol  drove 
straight  to  the  station.  I  knew  the 
ticket  agent  and  he  and  I  were  quite 
friendly.  I  drove  up  there  on  a 
gallop  just  as  the  train  pulled  in, 
and  said:  'Here,  Andy,  give  me 
two  tickets  for  Albany  and  two  to 
New  York.  I'm  not  going  and  I'll 
see  you  after  the  train  pulls  out.' 

"He  handed  over  the  tickets  and 
I  gave  them  to  the  other  four  mem- 
bers of  the  Criterion  company 
through  the  car  windows  just  as 
the  wheels  started  again.  Then  I 
turned  to  Andy,  the  ticket  agent. 
'Andy,'  I  said,  'I'm  going  up  street 
now  to  borrow  some  money  from 
Ira  Stevens,  and  then  I'll  be  down 


KZRA     KENDALL.  39 

and  pay  yoii.'  'Ira  Stevens!'  said 
the  agent,  witli  a  gasp.  'Why,  Ira 
isn't  in  town.  He  went  away  last 
week  and  he  isn't  expected  back 
for  two  months  yet.' 

"Well,  there  I  was.  The  train 
was  already  out  of  sight,  with  the 
four  people  for  whom  I  had  'stood 
off'  the  station  agent  for  tickets 
safely  on  board.  There  was  no  way 
to  get  the  tickets  back — that  was 
certain.  And  if,  as  the  station 
agent  said,  my  friend  Ira  Stevens, 
the  hotel  keeper,  from  whom  I 
expected  to  borrow  the  money  for 
the  tickets  was  out  of  town  for  two 
months,  I  was  certainly  up  against 
it.  And  so,  to  an  even  greater 
extent,  was  the  station  agent.  He 
had  trusted  me  for  $15  worth  of 
railroad  tickets,  for  which  he  would 
have  to  pay,  if  I  did  not  find  the 
money,  and  $15  was  a  lot  of  money 
for  either  of  us  to  lose. 

"'Never  mind,'  I  said  to  the 
white  faced  station  agent,  "I'll get 


40    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

that  money  somehow  and  I'll  pay 
you  the  $15.  You  just  wait  and 
see.' 

"Poor  fellow.  There  was  noth- 
ing else  for  him  to  do,  so  he  waited. 
I  drove  up  to  friend  Ira's  little  two- 
storied  frame  hotel,  and  found  that 
though  Ira  was  not  in  town  the  sit- 
uation was  not  quite  as  bad  as  the 
station  agent  had  pictured  it.  Ira 
would  be  back  in  a  couple  of  days. 
So  I  did  a  little  waiting — at  Ira's 
expense.  When  he  got  off  the  train 
and  walked  over  to  the  hotel  a  few 
days  later  I  met  him  at  the  door 
and  told  him  my  tale  of  woe. 

"  'No,'  said  Ira,  in  a  way  I  have 
always  thought  was  unnecessarily 
rough  and  brutal,  'I'll  not  lend  you 
a.  cent — not  a  penny.  I  should 
think  you'd  know  I  had  had  my  fill 
of  the  show  business.' 

"  'Gee,'  I  said,  'I've  got  to  get 
that  money  somewhere.' 

"  'Well,  go  and  get  it,  then,'  Ira 
said,  with  a  brutal  chuckle.    'Only 


EZRA     KENDALL.  41 

you  can't  work  me  for  it.'     That 
gave  me  an  idea. 

"  'Ira,'  I  said,  'if  I  can't  work 
you,  perhaps  I  can  work  for  you. 
Give  me  a  job.  I've  got  to  get  that 
money  or  the  New  York  Central'!! 
go  into  bankruptcy.' 

"Ira  said  that  was  more  like  it. 
He  wanted  a  bartender  and  he 
wanted  a  hostler  to  take  charge  of 
tlie  hotel  stable.  Both  positions 
were  open  and  he  offered  me  my 
choice  of  them .  It  was  bar  or  barn , 
and  I  chose  the  stable.  The  sal- 
ary, I  may  remark  in  passing,  was 
the  same  for  both  positions — $15  a 
month. 

"I  went  down  and  explained  the 
situation  to  the  station  agent  and 
assured  him  I'd  pay  him  his  money 
out  of  the  first  wages  I  got.  That 
relieved  the  tension  some,  but  the 
next  few  weeks  that  ticket  agent 
was  around  every  morning  to  call 
the  roll  and  see  that  I  was  still 
present. 


42    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

"I  worked  in  that  barn,  taking 
care  of  the  horses,  for  two  full 
months,  during  which  time  I  earned 
$30  in  wages  and  as  much  more  in 
tips  and  in  the  receipts  from  a  raffle 
I  organized  to  determine  which  res- 
ident of  Portlandsville  should 
become  the  possessor  of  a  large  and 
more  or  less  valuable  diamond 
stud  which  was  left  over  from  my 
more  prosperous  days. 

"I  have  always  liked  to  work 
around  horses,  and  so  I  enjoyed  that 
job  as  hostler,  but  I  got  a  lot  more 
than  enjoyment  out  of  it.  There 
was  an  old  fellow  named  'Nelse' 
Curry,  a  horse  doctor,  in  the  town, 
who  was  one  of  the  most  original 
characters  I  ever  met.  He  called 
himself  Mulo  Medicus  on  his  busi- 
ness cards,  and,  you  remember,  I 
used  that  title  later  in  'We,  Us  & 
Co.' 

"Nelse  would  never  admit  that 
he  didn't  know  all  about  anything 
that    was    beinsf    discussed.     For 


EZRA     KENDALL.  43 

instance,  one  day  I  was  treating  a 
saddle  gall  on  one  of  the  horses  in 
the  hotel  barn. 

"  '  What  yon  doin'?'  asked  Nelse. 

"  'Canterizing  the  wound  with 
carbolic  acid,'  I  said. 

"  'That's right,'  answered  Nelse. 
'Croticise  'er  three  times  a  day  with 
that  there  bibolic  acid  and  you'll 
come  out  O.  K.' 

"I  cultivated  Nelse  and  some 
more  queer  old  pods  who  hung 
around  the  stable,  as  they  always 
do  in  a  small  town,  and  when,  after 
a  couple  of  months,  I  got  ready  to 
go  back  to  New  York ,  I  had  a  couple 
of  books  full  of  notes  on  their  pecu- 
liarities of  dress,  habits,  and  lan- 
guage. 

"When  I  got  to  New  York  I  was 
pretty  nearly  broke  again,  and  I 
had  hard  sledding  for  a  few  weeks. 
Just  before  the  holidays  I  got  an 
engagement  with  the  'Wanted — A 
Partner'  company.  I  was  engaged 
to  play  the  part  of  a  countryman. 


44   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

It  was  an  entirely  new  role  to  me, 
but  I  was  fresh  from  my  course  of 
study  in  the  barn  at  Portlandsville 
and  thought  I  could  put  what  I  had 
learned  to  good  use.  I  made  an 
impression  as  a  countryman,  so 
much  of  an  impression  that  W.  A. 
Mestayer  came  to  me  and  engaged 
me  for  a  term  of  three  years  to  play 
thatlineof  parts  with  his  company. 
Mestayer  had  had  a  play  engaged 
for  the  next  season,  but,  for  some 
reason,  it  failed  to  materialize.  He 
had,  in  some  way,  got  a  good 
impression  of  my  abilities,  so,  after 
his  playwright  had  disappointed 
him,  he  came  to  me  and  asked  me 
if  I  thought  I  could  turn  out  some- 
thing in  the  play  line  for  him. 

"  'I  want  to  have  some  fun  with 
Hot  Springs,  Ark.,  in  one  act,'  he 
said,  'and  I've  bought  the  idea  of 
a  revolving  hotel  from  Bernard  for 
another  act,'  he  said.  'And that's 
as  far  as  I've  got.'  I  thought  of 
old  Nelse  Curry  up  at  Portlandsville 


EZRA     KENDALL.  45 

and  it  seemed  to  me  he  would  make 
a  good  character.  So  I  told  Mes- 
tayer  to  give  me  his  material  and 
I'd  see  what  I  could  do.  I  went 
up  in  the  country  and  worked  out 
'We,  Us  &  Co.'  In  that  play, which 
from  a  financial  standpoint  was 
highly  successful,  my  old  friend 
Nelse,  under  his  self-given  title  of 
MuloMedicus,  was  one  of  the  lead- 
ing characters,  and  I  drew  liber- 
ally on  my  Portlandsville  experience 
in  many  other  ways. 

"When  we  played  'We, Us  &  Co. ' 
at  Albany  there  was  a  special  train 
run  down  from  the  Portlandsville 
country  and  'Doc'  Nelson  Curry 
was  on  it.  He  sat  in  a  front  seat 
and  laughed  as  heartily  as  anybody 
at  his  own  antics  on  the  stage. 

"'We,  Us  &  Co.'  cleared  up 
$60,000  for  Mr.  Mestayer.  And  if 
the  story  I  have  told — or  any  one 
of  them — has  any  point,  it  is  that 
often  adversity  is  a  blessing  in  dis- 
guise.   I  thought,  for  instance,  that 


46  THROUGH  the  stage  door. 

the  two  months  I  spent  in  that  hotel 
barn  v/as  a  season  of  mighty  hard 
luck,  bnt  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was 
tiie  making  of  me  in  my  profession. 
There  is  nothing  which  can  happen 
to  a  man  out  of  which  he  cannot 
get  a  lot  of  good.  I  was  paid  only 
$15  a  month  for  working  in  the 
stable,  bnt  tlie  material  I  got  there 
was  worth  $60,000  to  Mr.  Mestayer. 

"I  don't  believe  that  often — if 
ever — a  really  good  character  or  sit- 
uation is  evolved  out  of  an  author's 
imagination .  Almost  invariably  the 
best  of  them  at  least  are  studied 
from  life. 

"My  present  play,  'The  Vinegar 
Buyer,'  is  based  on  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley's  poem  of  'Jap  Miller.' 
I  had  been  trying  for  a  long  time 
to  get  Mr.  Riley  to  write  me  a  play. 
I  made  several  trips  to  Indianapolis 
to  see  him.  Always  he  declared 
that  he  didn't  think  he  could  write 
a  play.  I  offered  him  $5,000  cash 
down  as  an  advance  if   he  would 


KZKA     KENDALL.  47 

sign  a  contract  to  prcpnre  a  play 
for  nie  and  a  furtlier  guarantee  that 
his  royalties  would  amount  to  $15,- 
000  or  more  within  two  years.  But 
not  even  that  tempted  Riley  in  the 
least. 

"  'I  can't  write  a  play,  Mr.  Ken- 
dall,' he  said,  'and  I'm  not  going 
to  try.' 

' '  So  we  fell  to  talking  about  some 
of  the  curious  old  Indiana  charac- 
ters he  has  celebrated. 

"  'Did  you  ever  read  my  poem 
of  "Jap  Miller"?'  he  asked. 

"I  never  had,  though  I  was 
familiar  with  almost  everything  he 
had  written.  I  found  the  poem 
extremely  suggestive,  and  told  Mr. 
Riley  so.  He  went  onto  elaborate 
on  the  character,  and  in  a  few  min- 
utes I  broke  in  on  him: 

"'Mr.  Riley,'  I  said,  'you  are 
writing  a  play  this  minute,  without 
knowing  it.' 

"So  that's  the  way  'The  Vinegar 
Buyer'  came  into  being." 


ADVENTURES  OF  THE  THEATRICAL 
PRESS  AGENT. 


9S4^ 


ONTRARY  to  public  opin- 
ion the  theatrical  press 
agent  is  personally  a  mod- 
est man.  He  is  willing  to 
go  to  almost  any  length  in  exploit- 
ing the  actress  or  actor  he  repre- 
sents, but  when  it  comes  to  per- 
sonal publicity  he  becomes  a  sen- 
sitive plant — a  shrinking  wood 
violet.  He  will  talk?  Yes.  But 
it  must  be  behind  the  screen  of 
anonymity. 

In  the  old  days  the  work  of  the 
theatrical  press  agent  was  to  call 
on  the  editor  of  the  country  paper 
and  invite  him  out  to  take  a  drink 
or  several  drinks — the  more  the 
better.  Incidentally,  he  was  ex- 
pected to  tell  how  his  star  had 
just  got  a  divorce  from  her  hus- 
band, or,  if  he  represented  a  mas- 
culine star,  how  his  principal  was 
involved  in   as   many  scandals   as 


MRS.  "I'AT"  CAMPBELL. 

SEE  PACE    S3. 


THE  PRESS  AGENT.  49 

possible.  If  he  was  a  particularly 
ingenious  press  agent  he  told  how 
the  actress  had  just  had  a  lot  of 
non-existent  diamonds  stolen. 

Now  all  this  is  changed.  Even 
the  title  has  been  given  up.  The 
man  who  now  looks  after  the  press 
work  for  a  big  theatrical  production 
is  called  the  business  manager,  not 
because  he  has  much  to  do  with 
the  business  management,  but  for 
the  reason  that  with  the  increased 
dignity  of  the  profession  has  come 
a  disinclination  to  even  suggest  that 
they  are  in  any  way  dependent  on 
the  gullibility  of  press  or  public. 

And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  an 
axiom  in  the  show  business  that  no 
matter  how  ingenious  the  press 
agent  may  be  it  is  altogether  im- 
possible for  him  to  boom  a  bad  star 
or  a  poor  play  into  lasting  popular- 
ity. Clever  press  work  may,  and 
often  does,  greatly  help  a  good  but 
obscure  player,  but  it  never  yet 
made  a  permanent  success  of  an 


50   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

incompetent.  In  theatrical  press 
work  as  in  all  other  forms  of  adver- 
tising publicity  amounts  to  nothing 
unless  you  can  really  "deliver  the 
goods." 

Nowadays  a  press  agent's  value 
depends  not  so  much  on  his  inge- 
nuity as  on  his  good  judgment. 
Plenty  of  things  which  the  news- 
papers are  glad  to  print  do  much 
more  harm  than  good  to  a  theatri- 
cal enterprise.     For  instance: 

A  few  years  ago  the  Victoria  the- 
ater,now  the  New  American, opened 
on  North  Clark  street,  in  Chicago. 
A  new  hand  was  hired  as  press 
agent  and  was  urged  by  the  man- 
agement to  get  up  a  sensation  which 
the  newspapers  would  print  the 
morning  after  the  opening.  It  hap- 
pened that  what  the  press  agent 
considered  a  good  sensation  actually 
occurred  the  day  before  the  open- 
ing. The  leading  woman  of  the 
company  was  traveling  on  a  rail- 
road train  through  Iowa  on  her  way 


THE  PRESS  AGENT.  51 

to  open  the  Victoria.  In  the  car 
with  her  three  people  were  discov- 
ered who  had  well  developed  cases 
of  smallpox.  Everybody  in  the  car 
was  captured  at  a  station  just  across 
the  Mississippi  and  taken  to  a  pest- 
house.  The  leading  woman  climbed 
out  of  a  window,  walked  for  five 
miles  through  the  woods,  and 
caught  a  train  which  brought  her 
to  Chicago  in  time  to  make  her 
appearance,  as  announced.  She 
had  not  even  been  vaccinated  or 
disinfected. 

The  leading  woman  told  her  story 
to  the  new  press  agent.  It  struck 
him  as  "a  corking  good  story." 
He  got  the  picture  of  the  leading 
woman  and  a  vivid  interview  with 
her,  describing  the  horrors  of  the 
pesthouse  from  which  she  had 
escaped.  Every  paper  in  Chicago 
printed  something  about  it  and  the 
new  press  agent  imagined  that  his 
fortune  was  made.  He  went  to  the 
manager's  office  early  the  morning 


52   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

the  stories  were  printed.  He 
thought  the  manager  would  meet 
him  with  open  arms  and  probably 
at  least  hint  at  a  raise  in  his  salary. 
On  the  contrary,  he  was  met  with 
a  cold  and  formal  letter  informing 
him  that  his  services  were  no  longer 
needed.     He  knows  better  now. 

As  an  example  of  the  microscopic 
pains  which  are  taken  to  avoid 
alarming  the  patrons  of  a  theater 
in  this  way  the  following  incident 
is  told: 

When  Miss  Julia  Marlowe  was 
playing  in  New  York  during  a  small- 
pox scare  there,  the  danger  of  con- 
tracting the  disease  was  minified  by 
the  newspapers,  but  the  great  the- 
ater going  public  was  quite  badly 
frightened.  When  the  scare  was 
at  its  height  the  manager  of  the 
company,  whose  business  it  is  to 
keep  in  close  touch  with  public 
sentiment,  went  to  Miss  Marlowe 
and  asked  her  to  temporarily  cut 
one  line  from  the  play.     When  the 


THE  PRESS  AGENT.  53 

reasons  for  the  request  were  given 
to  her  she  complied  at  once.  This 
was  the  line  which  was  elided: 

"Does  he  think  he'll  get  the 
plague  from  me?" 

'  'There  isn't  any  use  in  even  run- 
ning a  chance  of  suggesting  an 
unpleasant  thought  to  the  public," 
said  the  wise  manager,  and  Miss 
Marlowe  agreed  with  him. 

Among  the  press  agents  of  the 
present  day  in  the  United  States 
the  leader  is  probably  a  keen  and 
ingenious  person  who  rejoices  in 
the  unusual  name  of  A.  Toxin 
Worm.  To  the  profession  Herr 
Worm — for  he  is  by  birth  a  German 
— is  known  as  Anti-Toxin  Worm. 
It  was  he  who  was  responsible  for 
the  unique  press  work  which  put 
the  name  of  Mrs.  "Pat"  Campbell 
in  the  mouths  of  everybody  during 
her  recent  visit  to  America.  He 
was  quick  to  see  the  possibilities  of 
Mrs.  Campbell's  little  pet  dog. 
Hundreds  of  other  actresses  have 


54  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

had  pets  quite  as  interesting,  but 
certainly  no  other  dog  was  so 
quickly  made  historic  as  was  Pinky 
Panky  Po.  Even  in  coining  a 
name  for  the  miserable  little  beast 
HerrWorm  showed  positive  genius. 
It  was  Worm  also  who,  when  his 
star  was  playing  at  the  Republic 
theater,  in  New  York,  had  load  after 
load  of  tanbark  dumped  on  the 
streets  surrounding  the  building, 
and  then,  when  the  work  was  done, 
quietly  disappeared.  Forthwith 
came  the  dramatic  reporters  inquir- 
ing anxiously  the  reason  for  this 
strange  proceeding.  Each  of  them 
was  referred  to  Mr.  Worm.  Mr. 
Worm  was  hard  to  find.  Once 
found,  he  was  reluctant  to  "give 
up."  Finally  he  told  the  story. 
Mrs.  Campbell  was  extremely  nerv- 
ous. The  noise  on  the  streets 
annoyed  her  greatly.  He  had  had 
the  tanbark  put  down  so  that  she 
might  not  be  disturbed  while  act- 
ing. Newspapers  all  over  the  coun- 


THE  PRESS  AGENT.  55 

try  printed  stories  about  it.  Mr. 
Worm  also  ingeniously  invented  the 
tales  about  Mrs.  Pat's  enormous 
winning  at  bridge  whist.  He  was 
shrewd  enough  to  see  that  a  story 
of  that  class  would  interest  a  large 
class  of  people. 

But  the  press  agent  must  see  to 
it  that  he  does  not  "overplay  his 
star."  It  is  easy  to  give  him  or 
her  too  much  publicity  of  a  sensa- 
tional kind.  At  once  the  line  of 
safety  is  passed  the  effect  is  deadly. 
It  is  said  that  no  less  a  personage 
than  Richard  Mansfield,  entirely 
without  his  wish,  has  had  so  much 
notoriety  of  this  kind  that  the  reac- 
tion is  being  felt  at  the  box  office. 
The  public  has  read  so  many  tales 
about  the  great  actor's  ungovern- 
able temper  that  it  has  got  tired  of 
it  all. 


HOW  E.  H.  SOTHERN  REHEARSES 
HAMLET. 


IN  the  first  place,  Mr.  Edward 
H.  Sothern  takes  himself  and 
his  art  seriously — even  at  a 
rehearsal.  And  when  Ham- 
let is  the  subject  of  a  rehearsal  it 
is  easy  to  see  how  any  lightness 
might  kill  the  whole  tragic  effect. 
The  curtain  was  down  at  Powers' 
theater,  to  stop  the  draft  on  the 
stage,  and  behind  it  the  men  and 
women  who  are  to  present  the  trag- 
edy were  busy,  in  their  street 
clothes,  going  through  the  duel 
.scene. 

King  Claudius  held  his  regal  state 
sitting  on  a  kitchen  chair  and  dis- 
-tinguished  from  the  other  players 
by  the  golden,  gem  set  crown  that 
looked  sadly  out  of  place  in  con- 
nection with  a  standing  linen  col- 
lar and  a  sack  suit  of  clothes.  Out 
in  front,  close  to  the  blank  curtain, 
stood  young  Hamlet  and  Laertes — 


E.    H.    SOTHERN.  57 

Mr.  Sothern  and  the  other  player 
— both  in  dark,  short  coats.  Out 
to  them  tripped  the  young  Osric, 
swaggering-  with  his  arms  full  of 
foils.  Strangely  looked  the  young 
blade,  cavorting  in  trousers  and 
jacket. 

"Set  me  the  stoups  of  wine  upon 
that  table,"  orders  the  king,  rising 
in  majestic  poise  on  his  pine  board 
throne. 

The  page — a  most  modern  young 
woman  in  a  street  dress — bows  low 
as  she  fills  and  presents  the  golden 
bowl. 

Then  the  duelists  fall  to. 

"No,"  says  Sothern  to  Laertes, 
"on  the  second  stroke  you  must 
aim  higher.  Else  I  cannot  touch 
you  with  my  foil  naturally." 

They  go  through  it  again.  Sud- 
denly Sothern  stops  and  looks 
around  him.  All  about  the  edge 
of  the  stage  are  sitting  the  soldiers 
and  the  women  who  were  to  come 
on  later.    Someof  them  had  on  their 


58    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

overcoats  and  wraps.  They  were 
gathered  into  little  groups  and 
were  whispering  softly  among  them- 
selves. 

"I  must  ask,"  said  Hamlet,  be- 
coming suddenly  E.  H.  Sothern 
and  much  in  earnest  in  that  part, 
"I  must  ask  that  the  whispering 
stop.  You  can't  have  anything 
important  to  say  that  can't  wait. 
If  you  have,  go  out  of  the  theater 
or  down  stairs,  or  anywhere,  and 
say  it.  Then  come  back.  But  we 
can't  rehearse  with  that  's-s-s-s-s-s' 
sounding  in  our  ears  all  the  time. 
It  gets  on  a  man's  nerves;  it  takes 
him  out  of  the  part  he  is  trying  to 
play;  it  is  simply  damnable.  I 
don't  want  to  be  aggravating  about 
it,  but  I  won't  have  it." 

Thereafter  the  lofty  lines  rang 
out  in  utter  silence;  not  a  sound 
broke  into  the  solemn  scene  when 
the  queen  drank  the  poisoned  cup ; 
the  dying  Laertes  told  his  tale  of 
treachery  to  a  hushed  house  and  the 


E.    H.    SOTHERN.  59 

audience  of  one,  sitting  up  in  the 
flies,  out  of  sight,  was  thrilled  with 
the  tragedy  of  it  all,  forgetting 
coats,  trousers,  and  tailor  made 
gowns  and  the  total  lack  of  courtly 
surroundings. 

"I  make  it  a  rule,"  said  Mr. 
Sothern,  "not  to  allow  spectators 
at  my  rehearsals.  The  presence  of 
a  critic  or  two  sitting  down  in  front 
in  an  otherwise  empty  house  has  a 
bad  effect  on  every  actor.  It  takes 
him  outside  his  part  and  makes 
him  self-conscious.  He  feels  that 
he  has  not  yet  perfected  his  work 
and  he  is  wondering,  as  he  reads 
his  lines,  what  so-and-so  out  there 
in  front  thinks  of  it.  Youcan'tget 
a  man's  best  efforts — you  can't  get 
him  to  throw  his  whole  soul  into 
the  work  of  rehearsal — when  he 
knows  he  is  being  watched.  Un- 
consciously he  resents  the  idea  of 
being  inspected  and  criticised  be- 
fore he  has  reached,  as  nearly  as 
he  can,  the  stage  of  perfection. 


60   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

"  It 's  the  same  way  with  a  painter. 
I  studied  art  in  my  early  days  and 
I  know  what  the  effect  was  when 
a  casual  visitor  to  the  gallery  where 
I  was  copying  a  picture  stopped 
and  looked  at  my  uncompleted 
sketch.  It  simply  threw  me  out  of 
the  spirit  of  the  thing  and  often  I 
would'  fail  to  get  the  effect  I  was 
aiming  at  until  another  day. 

"For  the  same  reason  I  am  accus- 
tomed to  rehearse  my  own  parts 
all  alone  in  an  empty  theater,  after 
audience,  company, and  stagehands 
have  all  gone  home  for  the  night. 
There  is  something  inspiring  and 
compelling  to  me  in  the  very 
emptiness  of  a  great  theater,  just 
as  there  is  the  emptiness  of  a  great 
cathedral.  And  I  can  give  myself 
to  the  work  of  expressing  the 
thought  of  the  dramatist  at  such  a 
time  without  reserve  and  without 
any  feeling  that  I  am  being  watched 
and  criticised .  Another  reason  why 
I  think  it  best  not  to  allow  specta- 


E.    H.    SOTHERN.  61 

tors  at  rehearsals  is  that  it  is  some- 
times necessary  for  a  producing  star 
to  make  suggestions  to  the  mem- 
bers of  his  company;  sometimes, 
in  the  heat  of  the  moment,  he  may 
even  grow  a  bit  sarcastic  and  rebuke 
one  member  or  another  for  some 
unnecessary  lapse.  And  the  actor, 
being  a  grownup  man,  does  not  at 
all  enjoy  being  rebuked  in  the  pres- 
ence of  other  people." 


WILLIAM   GILLETTE-PLAYWRIGHT, 
ACTOR. 


«S« 


AST  season  for  more  than 
one  hundred  consecutive 
nights  there  were  no  less 
than  sixteen  different  actors 
playing  the  part  of  "Sherlock 
Holmes"  in  different  parts  of  the 
world,  with  William  Gillette, 
author  of  the  play  and  creator  of 
the  part,  serving  as  model  for 
them  all. 

There  were  five  companies  play- 
ing in  England,  two  in  the  United 
States,  two  in  Australia,  two  in 
South  Africa,  and  one  each  in 
Copenhagen,  Amsterdam,  Buda- 
Pesth,  Moscow,  Brussels,  and  the 
country  districts  of  Belgium.  It 
is  stated  that  so  far  as  the  number 
of  different  companies  which  are 
producing  it  at  the  same  time  is 
concerned  "Sherlock  Holmes" 
has  broken  all  previous  records, 
the  best  heretofore  being  that  of 


WILLIAM   GILLETTE.  63 

"Pinafore,"  which  was  presented 
by  twelve  companies  at  the  same 
time. 

Each  of  the  actors  who  is  pre- 
senting the  character  of  the  detec- 
tive had  the  advantage  of  studying 
Mr.  Gillette  in  the  part  during  his 
long  stay  in  London.  Most  of 
them  imitate  him  in  makeup  and 
methods,  and,  whether  it  is  pro- 
duced in  Rus  ian,  in  French,  in 
Danish,  in  German,  or  in  Nor- 
wegian, the  spell  of  the  tense  sit- 
uations of  the  play  holds  the 
audience  as  closely  as  it  does  in 
English  with  its  creator  in  the 
title  role. 

Sherlock  has  not  yet  been  pre- 
sented either  in  France  or  Ger- 
many, but  will  be  during  the  next 
year  or  two.  In  France  before  a 
foreign  play  can  be  presented  it  is 
necessary  to  employ  a  recognized 
member  of  the  society  of  dramatic 
authors  to  make  the  translation 
and  "stand  for"  the   production. 


64  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

To  him  a  certain  amount  of  cash 
must  be  paid  in  the  way  of  royal- 
ties, and  there  are  many  other 
technicalities  to  be  complied  with 
which  make  it  necessary,  or  at 
least  advisable,  for  the  principal 
to  be  on  the  ground. 

Everywhere  he  goes  Mr.  Gillette 
takes  with  him  his  little  working 
table  on  which  his  plays  are  writ- 
ten. He  usually  has  something 
new  under  way  and  spends  a  part 
of  many  days,  en  route,  at  his 
literary  work. 

The  table  itself  resembles  noth- 
ing so  much  as  one  of  the  old 
fashioned  sewing  tables  with  fold- 
ing legs.  Every  morning  his  Jap- 
anese valet  covers  the  top  of  the 
table  with  a  fresh  sheet  of  clean 
white  paper,  fastened  with  thumb 
tacks  underneath  the  top.  There 
is  also  laid  out  daily  a  fresh  sup- 
ply of  clean  steel  pens,  blotters, 
and  paper.  Unless  when  he  sits 
down  everything  about  the  work- 


E.  H.   SOTHKKN. 

SEE   PACE  56 


WILLIAM    GILLETTE.  65 

ing  table  is  fresh  and  spotless  the 
actor-author  finds  it  hard  to  do  his 
work. 

Nowadays  Gillette  does  not  often 
get  back  to  his  little  place  in  South 
Carolina— "The  Thousand  Pines" 
— which  he  built  on  the  top  of  a 
mountain  fourteen  miles  from  a 
railroad.  That  little  place  was 
built  when  the  world  looked  dark 
to  him.  He  had,  shortly  before, 
collaborated  over  the  writing  of  a 
play  which  was  a  complete  failure 
— the  only  failure  he  has  made  in 
the  play  line — and  family  bereave- 
ments had  completely  crushed  him. 
He  went  down  into  the  wilderness 
of  the  South  Carolina  mountain 
country  and  built  the  bungalow  with 
the  idea  of  spending  the  remainder 
of  his  life  there  as  a  hermit.  Cer- 
tainly no  spot  could  be  more  per- 
fectly adapted  for  that  method  of 
life.  The  only  neighbors  which 
"The  Thousand  Pines"  can  boast 
of  are  most  of  them  engaged  in  the 


66    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

manufacture  of  illicit  whisky.  Gil- 
lette made  friends  with  many  of 
them  and  added  to  his  knowledge 
of  human  nature  that  of  this  strange 
and  remarkable  type.  While  he 
lived  at  "The  Thousand  Pines" 
Gillette  did  his  own  cooking,  and 
his  chief  amusement  was  to  walk 
ten  miles  over  the  mountains  to  the 
nearest  village,  where  a  couple  of 
hundred  mountaineers  made  their 
homes.  He  staid  in  the  mountain 
fastness  long  enough  to  fight  out 
the  battle  with  himself  and  he 
emerged  strengthened  and  invigor- 
ated in  every  way. 

Long  before  he  became  an  actor 
his  desire  to  study  and  to  know 
human  nature  in  all  its  types  led 
him  to  undertake  even  stranger 
journeys  and  more  startling  changes 
of  character.  The  story  of  how, 
during  one  of  his  long  vacations 
from  college,  he  went  out  west  and 
got  a  job  as  an  apprentice  in  a 
machine  shop,   so  that   he    might 


WILLIAM    GILLETTE.  67 

study  the  workingman  at  first  hand, 
is  familiar.  Most  people  know 
also  that  the  house  of  his  father  in 
Hartford,  Conn.,  is  next  door  to 
the  old  home  of  Mark  Twain,  and 
that  the  humorist  put  Gillette  on 
the  stage  as  a  member  of  the  stock 
company  at  the  Boston  museum. 
Now  Twain  declares  that  the  joke 
he  thought  he  was  putting  up  on 
Gillette  is  about  the  only  one  he 
ever  tried  that  didn't  come  out  the 
way  he  expected. 

But  there  is  one  of  Gillette's  early 
experiences  which  is  not  so  well 
known  and  which  illustrates  how 
far  his  desire  to  know  men  at  first 
hand  carried  him.  It  also  hap- 
pened during  one  of  his  long  vaca- 
tions from  college.  At  that  time 
he  was  especially  anxious  to  study 
men  and  women  who  were  affected 
by  different  diseases  and  to  learn 
how  they  acted  in  such  circum- 
stances. Accordingly,he  left  home, 
and  with  no  warrant  but  his  own 


68   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

assurance  actually  hung  out  his 
shingle  as  a  physician  in  a  small 
town  in  Ohio.  It  should  be  said 
in  his  favor,  however,  that  he  did 
not  unduly  trifle  with  the  health  of 
his  patients.  The  only  medicine 
he  ever  gave  was  bread  pills,  and 
when  people  seemed  to  be  really 
ill  he  sent  them  to  some  regular 
practitioner  for  treatment.  Things 
were  going  along  well  with  the 
young  doctor-student.  He  was 
building  up  something  of  a  prac- 
tice and  was  curing  almost  the 
average  percentage  of  cases  with 
his  bread  pills  when  envious  rivals 
or  the  board  of  health  got  after  him 
for  practicing  without  a  physician's 
license.  Then  his  father  was 
obliged  to  come  to  his  aid,  and 
finally,  after  Gillette  had  proved 
that  he  never  gave  any  medicine 
but  bread  pills  and  had  produced  a 
number  of  people  he  had  cured  in 
that  way,  the  case  was  compro- 
mised.    But  he  went  away  with  a 


WILLIAM    GILLETTE.  69 

pretty  extensive  and  comprehensive 
knowledge  of  the  way  sick  people 
act  and  talk. 

The  special  car  on  which  Gillette 
and  his  company  traveled  last  sea- 
son was  usually  attached  to  the  end 
of  a  regular  passenger  train.  Down 
among  the  Indiana  sand  hills  some- 
thing happened  to  the  coupling 
apparatus  and  the  special  car  broke 
loose  from  the  train.  The  rest  of 
the  train  got  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
away  before  the  absence  of  the 
special  was  noticed .  Then  it  backed 
up  and  an  attempt  was  made  to 
replace  the  coupling.  But  part  of 
the  coupling  apparatus  was  broken 
and  the  pin  itself  was  lost.  The 
flagman  and  the  brakeman  made  a 
fruitless  search  to  find  something 
to  take  its  place.  Finally  one  of 
them  was  sent  back  to  the  nearest 
station,  several  miles  to  the  rear, 
to  get  something  for  that  purpose. 
Meanwhile,  Gillette  had  become 
aroused .     As  the  brakeman  walked 


70    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

away  on  his  long  errand,  Gillette 
came  out  on  the  rear  platform,  and, 
with  true  Sherlock  Holmes  omni- 
science, reached  up  on  the  roof  of 
the  special  car  and  took  down  a 
duplicate  of  the  missing  part. 

"I  happened  to  see  it  lying  up 
there  this  afternoon , "  he  said .  And 
the  trainmen  are  all  wishing  they 
could  have  a  Sherlock  aboard  all 
the  time  in  case  of  emergencies. 

The  great  ambition  of  Mr.  Gil- 
lette is  to  make  a  memorable  suc- 
cess of  his  coming  production  of 
"Hamlet." 

The  scenery,  costumes,  and  prop- 
erties for  "Hamlet"  are  almost 
all  under  way,  and  many  of  them 
have  been  completed,  though  if  Mr. 
Gillette  has  any  surprises  in  store 
he  is  keeping  them  a  careful  secret. 
Practically  none  of  the  people  who 
will  take  part  in  the  production  have 
been  engaged.  Rarely,  if  ever, 
can  Gillette  be  persuaded  to  play 
a   longer   season  than  twenty-five 


WIL,LIAM    GILLETTE.  71 

weeks.  He  is  not  physically  an 
especially  strong  man,  and  finds  it 
necessary  to  take  great  care  of  his 
health  and  not  to  overwork. 


E 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS. 

LENORA  DUSE,  the  famous 
Italian  actress,  is  one  of  the 
mysteries  of  the  stage.  She 
shuns  publicity — and  gets  as 
much  of  it  as  any  actress  in  the 
world.  She  refuses  herself  to  inter- 
viewers— and  sends  ahead  of  her 
one  of  the  most  accomplished  press 
agents  in  the  business.  She  declares 
that  the  public  has  no  concern  with 
her  life  off  the  stage — and  the  news- 
papers are  full  of  stories  of  her  early 
struggles  as  a  barefooted,  wander- 
ing child  actress  in  the  villages  of 
Italy,  and  of  her  more  recent  expe- 
riences with  the  tender  passion. 
She  owns  a  splendid  collection  of 
jewels — and  wears  no  jewelry  on  or 
off  the  stage.  She  is  said  to  loathe 
her  art — and  managers  fight  for  con- 
tracts with  her  for  years  to  come. 
She  declares  ambition  is  a  grisly 
phantom — and  her  own  ambition 
has  led  her  to  take  more  than  one 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS.        7Z 

sensational  revenge  on  those  who 
have  slighted  her. 

Is  it  all  a  pose?  Does  the  Italian 
tragedienne  wrap  herself  in  a  man- 
tle of  mystery  and  put  the  redoubt- 
able Mme.  Schmidt  on  guard  at 
her  door  because  she  knows  that 
attitude  will  only  whet  the  public 
curiosity?  Even  her  managers  do 
not  profess  to  know.  They  are 
amply  satisfied  with  the  result. 
And  they  point  out  that  she  must 
be  given  credit  for  entire  consist- 
ency in  her  attitude  towards  the 
public  outside  of  the  theater.  She 
goes  so  far  as  to  pay  absolutely  no 
attention  to  anything  that  may  be 
printed  about  her  private  life.  She 
will  not  even  take  the  trouble  to 
deny  a  story  which,  on  its  face,  is 
not  plausible.  Her  pose  is  one 
of  complete  indifference.  So  the 
guileless  press  agent  may  print  what 
he  pleases  without  fear  that  his  star 
will  find  fault  or  deny  it.  The  play- 
bills  say  that  Duse   is    thirty-two 


74   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

years  old.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
she  is  at  least  thirty-six.  She  has 
been  on  the  stage  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  beginning  when  she  was 
twelve  years  old.  She  was  bom 
in  a  little  Italian  village,  Vigerano, 
in  northern  Italy,  on  the  border 
line  between  Piedmont  and  Lom- 
bardy.  Luigi  Duse,  her  grand- 
father, was  an  obscure  Italian  actor, 
who  played  a  line  of  small  legit- 
imate parts  in  the  minor  Italian 
cities.  Her  father  was  known  on 
the  peninsula  as  "Sor"  Duse,  and 
is  best  remembered  as  once  having 
established  an  unsuccessful  theater 
at  Padua,  In  her  infancy  her 
parents  were  members  of  several 
different  bands  of  "strolling  play- 
ers." They  wandered  through 
Italy,  and  played  as  chance  would 
have  it — in  inn  yards,  restaurants, 
sheds,  anywhere. 

Here  is  a  story  which  throws 
some  light  on  her  childhood :  Duse 
was  playing  in  Vienna.  Already  she 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS.        75 

was  famous .    She  had  refused  many 
invitations  to  social  entertainments 
in   her  honor.     Finally  one   came 
from  an  Italian  nobleman  connected 
with  the  Italian  embassy  to  Aus- 
tria.    For  once  Duse  broke  her  rule 
and  accepted  it.     At  the  reception 
all  the  guests  save  one  came  for- 
ward to  do  homage  to  the  actress. 
The  exception   was  a  young  girl, 
who  stood  apart  and  watched  Duse 
with  eager  eyes.     Finally  she  ap- 
proached and  timidly  touched  Sig- 
nora   Duse's    hand.     The    actress 
questioned  the  girl  and  learned  that 
she  was  the  daughter  of  her  host. 
On  the  following  Tuesday  about 
midnight,  when  Signora  Duse  was 
about  to  retire,  a  servant  knocked 
at  her  door.      "A  lady  to  see  the 
signora,"  the  servant  announced. 
"Her  name?" 
"She  refuses  to  give  it." 
"What  does  she  seem  to  be?" 
"I  cannot  say,  signora.     She  is 
closely  veiled." 


76   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Signora  Duse  ordered  the  caller 
to  be  shown  in.  A  black  robed 
figure  entered  the  room.  The  ser- 
vant retired.  Then  the  caller  threw 
aside  her  veil  and  the  daughter  of 
the  diplomat  knelt  at  the  feet  of  the 
actress. 

"My  poor  child,"  said  Duse,  as 
she  raised  her  to  her  feet.  "What 
is  the  matter?" 

"The  girl  told  her  why  she  had 
come.  Her  home  was  happy.  But 
she  yearned  to  be  famous.  She 
wanted  to  be  a  great  actress. 

"Take  me  with  you,"  pleaded 
the  girl. 

"That  is  impossible,"  answered 
Duse. 

"Then  I  shall  kill  myself." 

Duse  led  the  excited  child  to  a 
seat. 

"  Once , "  said  the  actress , ' '  there 
was  a  poor  girl — so  poor  that  she 
was  always  barefooted  and  often 
went  the  whole  day  without  food. 
But  she  felt  a  spirit  stirring  within 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS.        11 

her — which  kept  crying  out  to  her, 
'Courage! ' 

"In  summer  and  winter,  in  plenty 
and  in  starvation,  she  heard  the 
voice  crying:  'Courage!  You  will 
be  great.' 

"Years  went  by — years  of  priva- 
tion and  suffering,  and  awful  toil. 
Then  the  skies  grew  clearer.  The 
girl's  name  got  into  the  mouths  of 
men.  It  spread  until  all  Italy  took 
it  up.  She  was  petted  and  caressed. 
She  was  truly  great." 

"How  beautiful,"  cried  the  girl. 

"Beautiful,"  replied  the  actress. 
"My  child,  that  woman  sits  before 
you.  She  would  give  all  her  great- 
ness to  be  a  happy  child  like  you." 

"But  fame  is  happiness,"  cried 
the  girl. 

"Fame  is  a  phantom,"  said  the 
actress .  ' '  You  are  far  happier  than 
I  can  ever  hope  to  be." 

The  girl  wept,  and  Duse,  calling 
her  carriage,  drove  her  back  to  her 
home. 


78    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Three  nights  later,  in  Berlin,  a 
courier  handed  a  letter  to  Signora 
Duse.     It  contained  a  letter: 

"Signor:  My  daughter  has  no 
secrets  from  me.  I  know  all  and 
bless  you.  I  send  you  a  token, 
priceless  in  itself,  doubly  priceless 
now ;  a  token  that  a  Medici  is  hence- 
forth a  father  to  you." 

The  letter  was  unsigned, but  Duse 
knew  from  whom  it  came.  It  con- 
tained a  gold  band  ring,  set  with 
six  opals  in  the  form  of  a  double 
oval.  That  ring  has  never  left  the 
finger  of  Duse  since  that  time. 

That  is  a  sample  of  what  the  free 
and  untrammeled  press  agent  can 
do.  Duse  will  never  either  deny 
or  affirm  it.  And  the  doubter  has 
only  to  look  at  the  ring,  as  he  will 
see  it  on  the  finger  of  the  actress. 

Schurman,  Duse's  present  man- 
ager, was  once  manager  for  Sarah 
Bernhardt.  He  has  had  the  man- 
agement of  the  Italian  tragedienne 
for  the  last  two  years. 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS.        79 

"Last  winter,"  says  Mr.  Schur- 
man,  "Duse  was  playing  at  Stutt- 
gart. William  II,  king  of  Wiirtem- 
burg,  was  one  of  the  enthusiastic 
spectators  in  the  audience.  The 
play  was  'Magda,'  and  after  the 
third  act  the  monarch  sent  for  Sig- 
nora  Duse's  impresario. 

' '  '  You  will  tell  Mme .  Duse , '  said 
the  king,  graciously,  'that  I  am 
profoundly  impressed  by  her  per- 
formance. I  shall  give  myself  the 
honor  of  visiting  her  in  her  dress- 
ing room  immediately.'  " 

Schurman,  who  has  a  French 
manner  a  Prussian  beard,  expressed 
his  thanks  and  hurried  back  to  his 
star's  dressing  room  to  give  her 
warning.  He  nervously  conveyed 
through  the  keyhole  the  royal  com- 
pliments and  the  further  intelli- 
gence that  the  actress  was  to  be 
honored  by  a  visit  from  the  king. 

"You  tell  his  majesty,"  she  said 
to  her  manager,  opening  the  door 
of  her  dressing  room  and  appear- 


80   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

ing  fully  dressed,  "that  I  am  grate- 
ful for  his  compliment  and  flattered 
by  his  attention.  But  tell  him  I 
feel  just  as  much  honored  by  hear- 
ing it  from  you.  Tell  him  I  cannot 
see  him  because  I  am  dressing." 

Then  the  king  was  heard  ap- 
proaching. Before  her  manager 
had  finished  whispering  the  fact  to 
Duse  the  door  of  her  dressing  room 
was  closed.  The  important  fact 
that  his  majesty  was  waiting  was 
communicated  through  the  keyhole. 
The  answer  came  back  from  Duse 
that  she  was  dressing  and  could  see 
nobody. 

"Then  I'll  wait,"  answered  the 
Suabian  ruler,  blandly. 

"If  you  do,  you'll  have  to  wait 
outside  as  long  as  I  stay  inside, 
your  majesty, ' '  was  Duse's  answer, 
as  her  manager  reports  it,  "for  I 
shall  not  come  out  while  you  are 
there." 

The  king  held  the  curtain  for  half 
an  hour  in    vain.     Then  he  went 


ELKNOHA   DUSE. 

SEE  PACE    72, 


DUSE,  THE  MYSTERIOUS.       81 

sadly  back  to  the  royal  box.  And 
Diise  had  won  a  new  fame  as  the 
only  actress  who  ever  gave  a  ruling 
monarch  the  snub  direct. 

Duse  has  signed  contracts  to  ap- 
pear in  this  country  next  year.  She 
is  beginning  to  show  considerable 
interest  in  the  United  States.  So 
far  on  this  trip  she  has  not  slapped 
a  persistent  interviewer,  which  is 
an  indication  that  she  is  getting 
used  to  American  methods.  It  is 
said  of  her  that  she  has  a  long 
memory.  More  than  one  manager 
who  slighted  her  in  the  days  of  her 
struggles  has  come  to  her  since, 
hat  in  hand,  and  done  his  best  to 
get  a  contract.  But  she  does  not 
forget,  and  to  not  one  of  those  who 
once  frowned  on  her  early  efforts 
has  the  signora  ever  given  a  hear- 
ing. 


WILLIAM  H.  CRANE  TELLS  STAGE 
STORIES. 


i 


«« 


WAS  about  to  suggest,  Mr. 

Crane,  that—" 

"That  reminds  me  of  a 

little  interchange  of  cour- 
tesies which  took  place  between 
Barry  Sullivan,  the  great  En- 
glish actor,  and  Manager  Buck- 
ley, of  the  Baldwin  theater  in  San 
Francisco,  on  the  opening  of  that 
house  by  Sullivan's  company.  I 
was  a  member  of  the  company  and 
was  standing  on  the  stage  the  after- 
noon before  the  opening,  when  the 
dialogue  between  the  two  occurred. 
Buckley  was  a  pompous  and  con- 
ceited man,  and  Sullivan  took  a 
great  dislike  to  him  from  the  start. 
"  'This,'  said  Buckley,  looking 
around  the  beautiful  house  and 
speaking  in  a  most  patronizing 
manner,  'is  the  third  theater  I  have 
opened.'  Then  he  stopped  and 
looked  at  Sullivan  to  see  what  effect 


WILLIAM  H.   CRANE.  83 

the  announcement  would  have  on 
him.  But  Sullivan  looked  him 
straight  in  the  eyes. 

"  'Indeed, sir,'  said  Sullivan, 'and 
how  many  have  you  closed?'  " 

"Mr.  Crane,  will  you — " 

"Tell  you  about  'Jimmy'  Powers? 
Why,  I  called  on  'Jimmy'  one  after- 
noon and  asked  him  to  go  over  town 
with  me  to  a  rehearsal  or  some- 
thing. 

"'Can't,'  said  'Jimmy.'  'I'm 
sorry,  but  I've  got  to  take  a  sing- 
ing lesson  this  afternoon.' 

"  'What  with,  Jimmy?'  I  asked, 
and  he  didn't  speak  to  me  for  six 
months." 

"And,  Mr.  Crane—" 

"Yes.  Hogue's  barber  shop  in 
the  old  days  was  patronized  by  all 
the  big  politicians  and  heavy  weight 
financiers  in  New  York.  One  morn- 
ing Lawrence  Barrett  walked  in 
there  for  a  shave. 

"Finally  a  chair  was  vacated  by 
a  fine  looking  old  man,  and  Barrett 


84  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

slipped  in.  The  barber  was  one  of 
those  talkative  chaps  that  keep  their 
tongues  running  faster  than  their 
razors. 

"  'Did  you  notice  that  gentleman 
who  just  got  out  of  my  chair?'  he 
asked,  as  he  tucked  a  towel  about 
the  great  Barrett's  neck. 

"  'Yes,  I  noticed  him,'  said  the 
tragedian,  in  a  deep  bass  voice, 'and 
I'm  in  a  great  hurry  this  morning.' 

"  'Yes,  sir,'  went  on  the  barber. 
'All  right,  sir.  As  I  was  saying, 
it's  a  funny  thing  about  that  gen- 
tleman. The  minute  I  put  my 
hands  on  his  head,  I  said  to  him, 
"Excuse  me,  sir.  Aren't  you  in 
the  law,  sir?"  "Yes,"  he  said, 
"I'm  in  the  law."  "High  up  in 
the  law,  sir?"  "I'm  Justice  Brown, 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,"  he  said.  'Well,  sir,  I 
don't  know  how  it  is,'  went  on  the 
barber,  'just  a  gift  I  have,  I  sup- 
pose, but  the  minute  I  lay  hands 
on  a  man's  head  I  can  tell  his  occu- 


WILLIAM  H.   CRANE.  85 

pation.  Only  yesterday  I  picked 
out  the  governor  of  Connecticut 
that  way  and — ' 

' '  By  this  time  Barrett  was  getting 
a  little  interested. 

"  'Perhaps,'  said  the  great  trage- 
dian, 'perhaps  you  can  tell  me  my 
profession?' 

"  'Just  a  minute,  sir,'  said  the 
barber,  'just  a  minute.' 

"Rapidly  he  ran  his  hands  over 
Barretts 's  Jovian  locks  and  across 
his  splendid  forehead.  Then  he 
leaned  over  with  a  confident  grin. 

"  'Shoe  store,'  he  said. 

"Now,  Mr.  Crane,  about — " 

"Well,  in  the  old  days  of  the 
Hooley  stock  company,  in  Chicago, 
of  which  I  was  a  member,  there 
was  a  young  actor  came  along  whose 
stage  name  was  William  H.  Wild- 
ing. He  had  had  a  good  commer- 
cial training  before  he  started  in 
with  us  to  become  an  actor,  and 
sometimes  he  used  to  ask  me  for 
advice.      He  played  the  court  clerk 


86  THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

in  the  trial  scene  in  the  'Merchant 
of  Venice'  and  that  sort  of  small 
parts.  I  told  him  I  often  thought 
him  foolish  to  give  up  business,  in 
which  he  had  a  fair  start,  for  such 
an  uncertain  thing  as  the  career  of 
an  actor, 

*'  'To  be  frank  with  you,'  I  said 
to  him  one  night,  'I  don't  think 
you  are  fitted  to  become  a  great 
actor.  You  seem  to  lack  the  dra- 
matic instinct,  and  without  it  you 
won't  go  far.  My  candid  advice  to 
you  is  to  go  back  into  business  and 
to  stick  to  it.' 

"The  next  day  Wilding  went  out 
and  hustled  for  a  job  in  a  store. 
He  got  a  clerkship  which  paid  him 
$15  a  week.  He  had  been  getting 
$25  in  the  stock  company,  but  he 
gave  that  up  at  once  and  went  into 
vulgar  trade.  When  he  left  the 
stage  he  gave  up  also  his  stage 
name  of  William  H.  Wilding  and 
took  his  own  name  of  John  K. 
Mockett. 


WILLIAM  H.   CRANE.  87 

"The  other  day  I  stopped  over 
in  Toledo,  O.,  for  a  few  hours,  and 
went  up  to  call  on  Mockett.  He 
is  now  the  owner  of  the  largest  and 
most  successful  clothing  and  fur- 
nishing store  in  Toledo,  and  one 
of  the  largest  in  the  State.  The 
name  of  Mockett  is  well  known  in 
trade  circles.  And  whenever  I  see 
the  man  whom  I  put  out  of  the  the- 
atrical business  he  renews  his  thanks 
for  my  part  in  the  change,  which 
he  has  never  regretted  since  he 
made  it." 

"Mr.  Crane,  David—" 

"That  was  one  man  I  helped  to 
get  out  of  the  show  business. 
Frank — Francis — Wilson  is  one 
whom  I  advised  to  stick  to  it  and 
to  leave  black  face  for  something 
more  legitimate.  When  I  first  met 
Wilson  he  was  playing  in  a  black 
face  sketch  called  'Wash  Day , '  with 
his  partner,  the  firm  being  Cronin 
&  Wilson.  But  even  then  Frank 
Wilson  was  an  energetic  and  am- 


88   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

bitious  man.  In  his  leisure  time, 
when  most  actors  would  have  been 
idling,  or  worse,  he  was  studying 
French,  German,  and  the  law.  He 
and  I  had  a  good  many  talks,  and 
I  advised  him  to  try  legitimate 
comedy  parts.  So  he  gave  up  $75 
a  week  in  negro  minstrelsy  and 
took  a  position  with  the  Chestnut 
Street  theater,  in  Philadelphia,  to 
play  second  comedy  parts  in  the 
stock  company  at  $25  a  week. 
Then  McCall  came  along  and  put 
him  into  light  opera,  where  he  has 
been  ever  since." 


"Well,  here's  a  letter  from  an 
Iowa  man  who  would  like  to  know 
if  I  shouldn't  love  to  be  playing 
Shakespeare 's '  Two  Dromios '  again 
with  Stuart  Robson .  I  should  think 
not.  Why, all  the  time  I  was  on  the 
stage  I  was  bound  foot,  hand,  and 
tongue.  If  Robson  had  a  cold  in 
his  head  I  had  to  have  a  cold  in 
mine.     If  Robson  had  a  felon  on 


WILLIAM  H.   CRANE.  89 

the  little  finger  of  his  right  hand 
it  was  necessary  for  me  to  rig  one 
up.  If  he  got  the  rheumatism  and 
had  to  wrap  up  his  knee  in  a  red 
flannel  bandage  I  had  to  do  the 
same.  It  was  dreadful.  I  had  to 
think  of  Robson's  other  things  all 
the  time.  Sometimes  I'd  get  all 
made  up  and  ready  to  go.  Then 
I'd  drop  into  Rob's  dressing  room 
for  a  minute  and  observe  that  he 
had  put  a  little  more  red  paint  than 
usual  on  his  cheeks  and  nose. 
Then  I  had  to  hurry  back  to  do  the 
same  thing.  It  was  a  dreadful 
experience." 


"Yes,  Harum  seems  to  be  going 
finely  again  this  year.  Some  of  the 
critics  say  it  is  likely  to  be  a  sec- 
ond'Rip  Van  Winkle.'  I  shouldn't 
object  to  that.  But  I  have  pro- 
duced more  new  plays  than  any 
actor  now  on  the  stage.  Getting 
a  good  play  is  harder  every  year. 
Some  time  ago  a  well  known  dra- 


90    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

matist  read  me  a  scenario  that  told 
a  beautiful  story.  It  was  just  what 
I  wanted.  I  accepted  it  and  ordered 
the  play,  paying  him  $2,500  as 
advance  money.  A  month  later 
he  brought  me  around  the  first  act 
to  read.  It  was  based  on  an  en- 
tirely different  scenario,  and  I  told 
him  so. 

"  'Why,  this  isn't  on  the  lines  of 
the  scenario  you  showed  me,'  I 
said, 

"  'No,  I  know  it,'  he  said,  'but 
it's  a  great  deal  better.' 

"I  didn't  like  it  at  all.  A  week 
later  he  called  again.  This  time 
he  wanted  to  borrow  $50.  I  let 
him  have  it,  of  course,  and  he  left 
a  receipt  for  it.  This  is  the  way 
the  receipt  read,  as  I  discovered 
after  he  had  left: 

"  'Received  of  W.  H.  Crane $50, 
to  be  repaid  out  of  the  first  royal- 
ties received  on  the  play  I  am 
writing  for  him.'  That's  the  last 
I   have   ever   heard   from   him.     I 


WILLIAM  H.   CRANE.  91 

suppose  he  simply  needed  the  $2,- 
500  in  his  business." 

Mr.  Crane's  dresser  handed  him 
a  realistic  rubber  mole,  which  he 
proceeded  to  paste  on  to  the  griz- 
zled and  wrinkled  cheek  of  David 
Harum. 

"The  last  boy  I  had  is  in  state's 
prison  now.  Stole  $1,800  and  ran 
away.  But  that  didn't  hurt  so 
much  as  what  I  learned  afterwards. 
It  seems  the  boy  had  been  spend- 
ing my  money  and  my  clothes  and 
raising  merry  Cain  in  half  the  towns 
we  visited. 

"'Aren't  you  afraid  that  Mr. 
Crane '11  find  you  out?"  some  one 
asked  him. 

" 'No, 'he  said.  'You  can't  fool 
Mrs.  Crane.  But  Crane — w  h  y  , 
Crane's  easy.' 

"And  that  really  did  hurt," 


A  CHICAGO  TRAGEDY  OF  HAMLET. 

N  the  closing  day  of  his  last 
eng-agement  in  Chicaga  in 
''Lazarre,''  Otis  Skinner 
played  to  a  matinee  "of  $1,- 


O 


618,"  as  the  box  office  pnts  it.  In 
the  evening  the  receipts  were  even 
larger.  But  the  time  is  not  far  dis- 
tant when  Mr.  Skinner  was  glad  to 
take  in  as  much  in  a  week  as  his 
average  daily  receipts  are  at  pres- 
ent. 

In  January,  1896,  for  instance, 
the  Skinner  company,  then,  as 
now,  under  the  management  of 
Joseph  Buckley,  was  playing  the 
little  towns  along  the  Ohio  river  in 
Kentucky  in  a  round  of  romantic 
dramas.  It  kept  Buckley  fairly 
busy  in  those  days  to  meet  the  pay 
roll  and  provide  sufficient  funds  to 
buy  railroad  tickets  from  one  little 
town  to  another. 

It  happened  that  in  January, 
1896,  Chicago  was  enjoying  a  per- 


TRAGEDY  OF  HAMLET.  93 

feet  epidemic  of  Shakespeare's 
"Hamlet."  For  the  week  of  Jan- 
uary 26th  Walker  Whiteside  was 
announced  to  present  the  great 
tragedy  at  the  Schiller.  The  next 
week  Creston  Clarke  was  to  present 
the  melancholy  Dane  at  McVick- 
er's.  Within  a  few  weeks  the 
famous  Italian  actor,  Salvini,  the 
younger,  was  underlined  in  the  same 
play  at  the  Schiller. 

For  the  week  of  January  26th  at 
the  Grand  opera  house  it  had  been 
announced  that  Mme.  Modjeska 
would  appear.  But  a  day  or  two 
before  her  opening  Modjeska  fell 
ill  and  was  obliged  to  telegraph 
Manager  Hamlin,  of  the  Grand, 
canceling  her  engagement. 

Mr.  Hamlin  immediately  can- 
vassed the  list  of  available  attrac- 
tions to  fill  in  the  vacant  two 
weeks.  Finally  it  occurred  to  him 
that  Otis  Skinner  would  be  a  draw- 
ing card.  He  got  into  communi- 
cation with  Mr.  Buckley  at  Padu- 


94    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

cah,  Ky.,  and  offered  the  Skinner 
company  a  good  thing  if  it  would 
cancel  its  time  in  Kentucky  and 
come  up  to  Chicago  for  the  fort- 
night. 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Buckley,  some- 
what embarrassed  at  the  situation 
which  confronted  him,  "we  would 
like  to  come  to  Chicago  first  class, 
but  it  is  several  hundred  miles  dis- 
tant from  Paducah." 

Which  was  Mr.  Buckley's  deli- 
cate way  of  hinting  that  he  did  not 
have  the  ready  money  to  buy  the 
necessary  railroad  tickets.  That 
essential  matter  was  arranged  by 
Mr.  Hamlin's  advancing  the  funds 
by  telegraph,  and  Otis  Skinner  and 
his  fellow  players  took  the  first  train 
for  Chicago. 

At  the  time  everybody  in  the 
theatrical  line  in  the  city  was  talk- 
ing about  the  Hamlet  craze.  Walker 
Whiteside  opened  at  the  Schiller 
in  the  Shakespearean  play  and  all 
the  critics  said  it  was  "a  creditable 


TRAGEDY  OF  HAMLET.  95 

production,"  which  is  their  way  of 
avoiding  the  saying  of  something 
worse.  At  any  rate,  the  Whiteside 
production  represented  the  invest- 
ment of  a  large  sum  of  money.  The 
scenery  and  the  costumes  were  fine, 
and  the  lines  were  given' '  a  thought- 
ful and  intelligent  reading." 

Skinner  opened  at  the  Grand  in 
one  of  his  stock  plays  to  only  fair 
business.  That  night  Mr.  Hamlin 
asked  him  if  he  had  ever  played 
Hamlet. 

Yes,  he  had  played  Hamlet  once, 
before  the  students  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Wisconsin.  But  he  had  no 
costumes,  no  scenery,  no  proper- 
ties. 

Well ,  play  it  again ,  here  and  now. 
Never  mind  scenery  or  costumes  or 
other  incidentals.  Do  the  best  you 
can.  The  people  want  "Hamlet." 
We  must  give  it  to  them. 

Forthwith  began  the  greatest 
hustle  on  record  for  scenery  and 
costumes  which  could  be  forced  into 


96   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

service.  For  the  graveyard  scene 
the  only  thing-  that  could  be  found 
was  a  back  drop  which  had  been 
left  behind  by  a  company  playing 
"The  Texas  Steer."  It  was  a  gar- 
den scene  with  a  statue  of  U.  S. 
Grant  in  the  center.  Of  course,  it 
was  necessary  to  cover  up  that 
statue,  so  a  group  of  stage  trees 
was  arranged  in  front  of  it,  which 
hid  the  monument  from  everybody 
e«;cept  the  people  in  the  left  hand 
boxes  and  those  who  occupied  seats 
on  that  side  of  the  house. 

A  costume  for  Hamlet  was  found 
at  the  shop  of  a  local  dealer  who 
makes  a  specialty  of  supplying  the 
wants  of  masqueraders.  All  sorts 
of  similar  shifts  were  turned  and, 
finally,  a  day  or  two  later,  the  first 
performance  of  "Hamlet"  by  "the 
eminent  Shakespearean  actor,  Otis 
Skinner,"  was  announced. 

The  night  of  the  first  improvised 
performance  the  house  was  fairly 
filled.     But  the  critics  went  almost 


KVIil.K   I'.KLI.KW   AM)  MUS.  JAMKS   liUoWN    I'l  )l  "IKK. 

SEE  PACE    113 


TRAGEDY  OF  HAMI.ET.  97 

into  ecstasies  over  Skinner's  read- 
ing of  the  lines,  and  everybody 
who  had  been  present  must  have 
talked  to  his  friends  about  the 
superlative  merit  of  the  perform- 
ance. The  second  night  of  "Ham- 
let" every  seat  was  filled.  The 
praise  grew  stronger.  "The  great- 
est Hamlet  since  Booth  has  been 
discovered,"  said  the  critics,  all 
in  one  breath.  Meanwhile  the 
astonished  success  of  Skinner  had 
had  a  bad  effect  on  the  attendance 
at  the  Schiller.  After  three  nights 
of  "Hamlet,"  Walker  Whiteside 
gave  it  up  and  turned  to  other  plays 
in  his  repertoire,  in  which  the  com- 
parison was  not  so  strong. 

Skinner  turned  into  the  second 
week  with  the  Sunday  papers  full 
of  his  remarkable  performance. 
Public  interest  was  heightened  by 
the  announcement  in  the  same  issues 
that  Creston  Clarke  would  open 
that  week  at  McVicker's  in  "Ham- 
let," the  inference  being  that  now 


98   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

the  theater-going  people  of  Chicago 
would  see  the  "real  thing"  in  the 
line  of  Shakespeare.  Clarke's  good 
angel  had  provided  him  with  suffi- 
cient funds  to  make  an  elaborate 
production  and  plenty  of  scener)' 
and  costumes  had  been  arranged 
for.  It  was  a  case  of  "wait  for  the 
big  show." 

But  Clarke  did  not ' '  make  good . ' ' 
His  engagement  at  McVicker's  was 
for  two  weeks,  but  at  the  end  of  the 
first  seven  days  the  remainder  of 
the  time  was  canceled,  and  Clarke 
disappeared,  for  the  time  at  least, 
from  metropolitan  theaters. 

Meanwhile,  the  crowds  and  the 
enthusiasm  aroused  by  the  Skinner 
portrayal  increased.  When  he  put 
on  something  else  the  audiences  at 
the  Grand  were  not  so  large,  but 
every  performance  of  "Hamlet" 
packed  the  house.  It  was  a  suffi- 
cient answer  for  all  time  to  the 
claim  that  people  do  "not  care  for 
Shakespeare." 


TRAGEDY  OF  HAMLET.  99 

Finally,  after  the  other  three 
Hamlets  had  closed  their  engage- 
ments, but  while  the  excitement 
engendered  by  the  rivalry  was  still 
fresh  in  the  public  mind,  along 
came  the  great  Salvini  the  younger. 
He  was  jealous  of  the  fame  won  by 
Skinner  in  the  part  of  Hamlet,  or, 
at  least,  he  was  determined  that  he 
would  surpass  it. 

On  Monday  night  he  opened  to 
a  big  house  at  the  Schiller  in  the 
great  tragic  part.  On  Tuesday 
night  the  audience  was  much 
smaller.  On  Wednesday  evening, 
with  "Hamlet"  still  the  bill,  there 
was  a  beggarly  house.  Salvini's 
manager  overrode  the  entreaties  of 
his  star  and  took  "Hamlet"  ofif  for 
the  rest  of  the  engagement,  substi- 
tuting other  plays  in  the  Italian's 
repertoire. 

Salvini  was  broken  hearted.  He 
fought  the  determination  to  with- 
draw "Hamlet"  as  bitterly  as  he 
could,    and   it   was   only   after  an 


100    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

almost  pathetic  scene  between  him 
and  his  manager  that  the  determi- 
nation was  arrived  at.  After  that, 
and  during  the  remainder  of  his 
engagement,  Salvini's  acting 
seemed  to  lack  its  accustomed  fire 
and  spirit.  He  took  the  success  of 
Skinner  in  the  one  part  he  wanted 
to  play  most  keenly  to  heart.  He 
could  talk  of  nothing  else.  In 
talking  over  the  matter  with  Mr. 
Buckley  he  actually  broke  down  and 
wept  bitterly,  raving  against  the 
theater-going  people  of  Chicago, 
denouncing  the  critics,  and  speak- 
ing bitterly  of  the  action  of  his  own 
manager. 

But  there  was  nothing  to  be  done 
about  it.  The  test  had  been  made, 
and,  under  the  most  difficult  and 
embarrassing  circumstances .  Skin- 
ner had  won  the  verdict.  Salvini 
left  Chicago  a  thoroughly  crushed 
and  disappointed  man. 

Not  long  after  his  Chicago  expe- 
rience Salvini  gave  up  his  career  in 


TRAGEDY  OF  HAMLET.        101 

America  and  went  back  to  the  home 
of  his  father  in  Italy.  He  never 
seemed  to  fully  recover  his  ambi- 
tion and  spirit,  and  within  a  few 
months  after  reaching  his  old  home 
he  died  of  an  obscure  disease. 

As  for  Skinner,  Mr.  Buckley,  his 
manager,  made  an  effort  to  interest 
rich  men  in  an  undertaking  to  send 
his  star  out  in  a  splendid  revival  of 
"Hamlet,"  but  he  failed  to  get  the 
money  and,  though  the  tragedy  was 
produced  during  that  season  on  the 
road  and  with  almost  unfailing  suc- 
cess, it  was  never  especially  feat- 
ured. 

So,  by  what  was  a  mere  chance 
of  the  theatrical  business,  one 
famous  actor  was  sent  home  broken 
hearted,  to  die  soon  after,  while 
the  rising  stars  of  two  other  young 
tragedians  were  apparently  perma- 
manently  obscured.  And  this  by 
a  man  who  played  "Hamlet"  be- 
fore scenery  stolen  from  "A  Texas 
Steer,"  and  who  wore  a  costume 


102   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

rented  by  the  week  from  the  shop 
of  a  dealer  in  ready-made  disguises 
for  masqueraders. 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN  OPERA  STAR. 

GOOD  many  years  ago,  when 
"Tom"  Prior  was  running  a 
comic  opera  company  at  the 
old  Schiller  theater,  in  Chi- 


cago, a  young  girl  came  up  to  the 
city  from  a  hamlet  on  the  banks  of 
the  Wabash  in  Indiana,  Her  father 
was  a  church  deacon  in  the  Indiana 
village  and  his  daughter  came  up 
to  Chicago  to  study  music.  She 
brought  with  her,  as  chief  assets, 
a  lot  of  ambition  and  an  extremely 
promising  voice. 

This  was  some  time  before  the 
Indiana  artistic  and  literary  move- 
ment set  in,  and  the  Hoosier  with 
soulful  longings  was  naturally 
looked  upon  with  some  degree  of 
suspicion.  But  when  Manager  Prior 
heard  the  girl  sing — her  real  name 
was  Gracie  Quivey — he  engaged  her 
to  sing  in  the  chorus  of  "The  Black 
Hussar. ' '  So  she  wrote  home  that 
she  was  getting  along  finely;   that 


104   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

she  already  had  secured  a  per- 
manent position  which  would  pay 
her  expenses  while  she  was  study- 
ing music — though,  to  be  sure,  she 
did  not  go  into  details  as  to  just 
what  her  position  was. 

It  may  be  that  Papa  Quivey  took 
it  for  granted  that  his  daughter 
was  singing  in  a  church  choir, 
though  certainly  his  little  girl  never 
willfully  deceived  him  in  this  regard . 
When  Gracie  went  on  the  stage  she 
followed  tradition  and  made  a  slight 
change  in  her  ancestral  Scotch 
name.  She  left  off  the  terminal 
"y"  and  became  for  artistic  pur- 
poses Miss  Gracia  Quive, which  cer- 
tainly sounds  comic  opery. 

Inside  of  two  weeks  she  had 
advanced  in  her  profession  to  the 
front  row.  Then  two  important 
things  happened.  The  first  in  point 
of  time  was  a  visit  paid  to  the 
Schiller  theater  by  a  casual  way- 
farer from  Miss  Quive 's  home  town 
in  Indiana.     As  is  customary  with 


AN   OPERA  STAR.  105 

visitors  from  the  rural  districts,  he 
sat  as  far  down  in  front  as  was 
humanly  possible.  When  the 
jaunty  chorus  came  swinging  out 
on  to  the  stage  the  gentleman  from 
Indiana  gave  one  look  at  the  front 
row  and  almost  had  a  fit.  There 
in  extremely  abbreviated  skirts 
stood  little  Gracie  Quivey,  whom 
he  had  often  taken  to  sleighing  par- 
ties and  barn  dances  in  the  old  home 
town.  Right  after  the  first  act  the 
Hoosier  made  his  escape  and  caught 
a  train  for  home.  He  had  a  piece 
of  news  that  was  altogether  too 
good  to  keep .  He  knew  something 
that  would  set  the  village  gossips 
afire.  Before  breakfast  next  morn- 
ing he  went  over  to  tell  his  next 
door  neighbor,  and  his  wife  started 
out,  without  stopping  to  wash  the 
breakfast  dishes,  to  spread  the  glad 
tidings. 

"  'Si'  was  up  there  to  Chicago 
and  went  to  one  of  them  opry  shows 
and  seen  Deacon   Quivey 's  Grace 


106   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

standing  right  out  onto  the  stage 
with  pink  tights  on." 

Before  noon  "Pa"  Quivey  him- 
self had  heard  of  it,  and,  horrified 
and  scandalized  at  the  thought,  he 
hurried  to  Chicago  on  the  first  train. 

Then  fate  stepped  in  again.  The 
day  that  "Pa"  Quivey  arrived  in 
town  the  prima  donna  of  the  opera 
company  suddenly  made  up  her 
imperious  mind  that  she  was  going 
back  to  New  York,  and,  without 
stopping  to  do  more  than  draw  a 
week's  salary  in  advance,  she 
jumped  on  board  a  train. 

Manager  Prior  heard  of  his  star's 
desertion  along  in  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon.  He  was  in  despair.  He 
called  the  company  together  and 
canvassed  its  members  for  a  possi- 
ble substitute,  there  being  no  reg- 
ular understudy  for  the  prima  donna. 

It  developed  that  Gracia  Quive 
was  the  only  woman  in  the  cast 
who  was  at  all  familiar  with  the 
songs  and  music    of    the    leading 


AN  OPERA   STAR.  107 

role.  But  she  did  not  know  the 
words  of  the  spoken  dialogue. 
Prior  was  desperate,  for  he  had  had 
a  good  advance  sale. 

"Well,"  he  said,'  "you'll  have 
to  go  on.  Miss  Quive,  and  do  the 
best  you  can  with  the  part.  I'll 
put  a  man  with  a  prompt  book  on 
each  side  of  the  stage  and  you'll 
have  to  wing  the  part  so  far  as  the 
words  go." 

As  aforesaid,  Miss  Quive  was 
even  then  an  extremely  ambitious 
young  person,  and  she  determined 
to  do  her  best  to  make  a  hit  in  the 
star  role,  or  at  least  to  play  it  so 
well  that  she  would  be  kept  in  the 
part.  She  sat  down  in  the  stage 
at  once  and  studied  straight  ahead 
until  time  for  the  evening  perform- 
ance, without  even  stopping  to  eat 
dinner.  An  hour  before  the  cur- 
tain her  old  father  found  his  way 
back  to  the  stage  door  and  finally 
got  in  to  see  his  daughter.  He  was 
furious  at  the  humiliation  he  con- 


108    THROUGH  THE  STAGB  DOOR. 

sidered  his  daughter  had  cast  upon 
him  and  absolutely  refused  to  allow 
her  to  go  on  the  stage  again. 

But  Manager  Prior  finally  suc- 
ceeded in  persuading  him  to  let  her 
go  on  for  that  night  only.  As 
might  have  been  expected,  Miss 
Quive  was  badly  rattled  when  she 
made  her  appearance.  She  knew 
nothing  of  the  lines,  in  the  first 
place;  she  was  jumping  straight 
from  the  chorus  to  a  star  part;  and, 
last  of  all,  he  angry^  old  father,  of 
whom  she  was  dreadfully  afraid, 
was  waiting  to  take  her  home. 

Will  J.  Davis,  the  well  known 
manager,  happened  to  occupy  a 
stage  box  that  night.  He  saw 
plainly  that  the  new  star  was  hav- 
ing a  hard  time  of  it.  He  heard 
the  prompters  bawling  at  her  from 
both  sides  of  the  stage .  But  he  was 
at  the  same  time  struck  with  the 
quality  of  her  voice,  and  he  made 
a  note  of  her  name  for  future  refer- 
ence. 


AN  OPERA   STAR.  109 

Next  morning  early  her  father 
took  her  back  home  to  Indiana,  and 
Miss  Gracia  Quive's  retirement 
from  the  stage  appeared  to  be  com- 
plete. 

Six  months  later  a  well  known 
vocal  teacher  called  on  Mr.  Davis 
to  interest  him  in  the  education 
and  future  of  a  young  woman 
singer.  Gracia  Quivey — with  the 
"y"  back  again  in  its  place — was 
hername.  Mr.  Davis  remembered, 
and  presently  he  was  able  to  get 
her  a  place  to  sing  in  a  church 
choir  out  at  Oak  Park.  There  she 
sang  on  Sundays  all  the  time  she 
was  having  her  voice  trained  during 
the  week. 

Perhaps  a  year  later  the  Boston- 
ians  were  going  to  try  voices  in  New 
York.  The  idea  was  to  get  some 
fresh,  new  voices  of  promise  in  their 
chorus.  Miss  Quive  went  down 
with  a  note  of  introduction  from  Mr, 
Davis.  Out  of  forty  voices  heard 
on  that  occasion  hers  was  the  only 


110   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

one  that  passed  the  critical  exam- 
ination, and  a  little  later  Miss  Qui ve 
joined  the  Bostonians.  She  made 
rapid  progess  in  the  company  and 
seemed  well  on  the  way  to  the  top, 
when  something  else  happened. 

Dr.  Van  Studdiford,  of  St.  Louis, 
a  young  man  of  wealth  and  social 
position,  fell  in  love  with  the  singer 
and  persuaded  her  to  leave  the 
stage  and  become  his  wife.  Then 
followed  a  few  years  of  retirement 
from  professional  life,  during  which 
Mrs.  Van  Studdiford  enjoyed  all 
the  advantages  which  money  could 
give  her. 

Then  came  financial  disaster  and 
in  a  few  months  most  of  the  Van 
Studdiford  money  had  completely 
vanished.  But  Mrs.  Van  Studdiford 
still  had  her  voice,  and  her  ambi- 
tion to  make  a  notable  place  for 
herself  on  the  operatic  stage  had 
only  grown  stronger  during  her 
retirement.  She  found  a  good  posi- 
tion at  once  and  without  difficulty. 


AN  OPERA   STAR.  Ill 

For  a  few  months  she  was  with  an 
opera  company,  which  she  left  be- 
cause other  members  of  the  com- 
pany found  fault  w^hen  her  friends 
in  vSt.  Louis  sent  quantities  of  flow- 
ers over  the  footlights  to  her  when 
a  St.  Louis  date  was  played.  Part 
of  one  season  she  was  under 
engagement  with  the  Castle  Square 
opera  company,  though  illness  kept 
her  to  her  room  for  months  and 
prevented  her  from  appearing  until 
the  season  was  almost  over, 

Mrs.  Van  Studdiford  has  taken  a 
whirl  around  the  vaudeville  circle 
in  company  with  some  of  her  old 
colleagues  in  the  Bostonians,  She 
played  the  round  of  the  continuous 
houses  in  Chicago  and  went  through 
to  the  coast  on  the  Orpheum  cir- 
cuit. 

Last  season  she  was  back  again 
with  the  reorganized  Bostonians. 

They  say  that  before  a  singer  or 
a  musician  of  any  kind  can  show 
true   feeling  in  his  work  he  must 


112    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

have  known  most  of  the  deeper 
emotions  to  which  humanity  is 
heir,  and  those  who  have  heard 
Mrs.  Van  Studdiford  sing  since  she 
returned  to  the  stage  profess  to  find 
in  her  voice  the  softening  and 
broadening  effects  of  her  more  recent 
experiences. 

She  has  recently  signed  a  con- 
tract with  a  prominent  manager  by 
the  terms  of  which  she  will  appear 
this  year  as  a  star  at  the  head  of 
an  opera  company  of  her  own.  She 
will  make  her  debut  in  a  stellar  role 
in  a  new  opera,  for  which  Victor 
Herbert,  who  has  made  something 
of  a  study  of  Mrs.  Van  Studdiford 's 
capabilities,  is  now  writing  the 
music. 


MRS.  VAN  STIIDDIFOKI). 

SEE  PACE  103. 


THE  HANDSOMEST  MAN  ON  THE 
STAGE. 


K 


fafu 


YRLE  BEIvLEW,  who  is 
illustrating  the  way  in  which 
a  gentleman  of  France  runs 
a  dozen  villains  through 
with  his  trusty  rapier  before  break- 
fast, has  been  more  different  things 
in  the  course  of  his  career  than  the 
most  versatile  of  his  contempora- 
ries. 

It  is  a  question  whether  he  is 
better  known  as  an  actor  or  a  gold 
mine  owner  and  mining  engineer. 
Besides  he  has  been  a  sign  painter, 
a  sailor  before  the  mast,  an  Aus- 
tralian "sundowner"  or  tramp,  and 
a  dime  museum  lecturer.  Just  now 
he  has  blossomed  out  as  an  author. 
His  book — ' '  Stray  Stories  of  a  Stage 
Nomad" — has  already  been  pub- 
lished in  London,  and  is  shortly  to 
be  issued  by  the  Appletons  in  this 
country.  And  in  this  book  Mr. 
Bellew  tells  such  tales  of  his  own 


114   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

experiences  that  his  friends  in  the 
theatrical  business  are  urging  him 
to  dramatize  his  own  life  the  next 
time  he  is  at  a  loss  for  a  romantic 
and  sensational  drama.  To  this 
proposition  Mr.  Bellew  objects  on 
the  grounds  that  the  public  is  tired 
of  lurid  melodrama,  and  that  every- 
body would  say  that  it  was  too  im- 
probable, anyway. 

When  Bellew  was  in  London  the 
last  time  a  woman  brought  him  her 
autograph  book  to  write  in.  He 
turned  the  pages  till  he  came  to 
the  leaf  on  which  H.  Beerbohm 
Tree  had  left  his  mark. 

"  'Tis  I— Hamlet,  the  Dane— 
H.  Beerbohm  Tree,"  was  what  the 
English  actor  had  written.  Bellew 
took  his  pen  and  wrote  on  the  same 
page  and  immediately  beneath  Mr. 
Tree's  contribution  another  quota- 
tion. "  'Tis  true,  'tis  pity;  and 
pity  'tis  true — Kyrle  Bellew,"  was 
the  sarcastic  inscription;  which  is 
a  fairly  typical  example  of  how  much 


KYRLE  BELLEW.  115 

actors  love  one  another.  Mr.  Bel- 
lew's  first  experience  in  the  Aus- 
tralian gold  fields  was  a  good  many 
years  ago.  He  had  made  consider- 
able progress  and  was  in  a  fair  way 
to  become  a  mining  millionaire 
when  suddenly  the  experimental 
government  of  the  antipodes  passed 
a  law  declaring  that  thereafter  it 
should  not  be  lawful  to  employ  the 
labor  of  the  black  natives  of  the 
islands  in  mines  of  any  kind.  That 
put  Bellew  out  of  business  almost 
at  a  sweep.  He  struggled  along 
untilhismoney  was  all  gone.  Then 
he  turned  the  water  into  his  mines, 
flooded  them,  and  set  out  to  find 
something  to  do.  He  had  hard 
work  finding  it — such  hard  work 
that  he  finally  became  what  the 
Australians  call  a  "sundowner," 
which  is  the  same  thing  as  a  tramp 
in  this  country.  He  "panhandled" 
his  way  through  the  scrub,  begging 
for  food  at  the  back  doors  of  ranch 
houses,  until  he  finally  struck  Mel- 


116    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

bourne.  There  he  made  the  rounds 
looking  for  work.  Finally  the  land- 
lord of  a  little  tavern  expressed  a 
mild  desire  to  have  a  sign  painted 
on  the  front  of  his  inn,  and  Bellew, 
by  declaring  that  he  was  an  artist 
by  trade,  got  the  job.  He  painted 
a  huge  white  lion  all  across  the 
front  of  the  hotel,  and  it  made  such 
a  hit  with  landlord  and  guests  alike 
that  ever  since  then  "The  White 
lyion"  has  been  a  favorite  title  for 
Australian  inns.  For  some  weeks 
Bellew  did  a  rushing  business  in 
the  painting  of  white  lions,  and 
when  he  had  finally  plastered  the 
fronts  of  a  majority  of  the  houses 
of  entertainment  in  the  vicinity  with 
the  insignia  he  turned  to  something 
else. 

First  he  visited  the  local  wax 
works'  show  and  there,  by  an  exhi- 
bition of  great  fluency  and  elo- 
quence, obtained  a  situation  as 
official  lecturer.  A  little  later  he 
was  wandering  along  the  docks  one 


KYRLE  BELLEW.  117 

day  when  some  one  asked  if  he 
knew  anything  about  boats. 

"Boats, "repliedBellew.  "Why, 
I'm  a  sailor  by  trade." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  sailed 
before  the  mast  for  several  years, 
and  he  did  know  a  great  deal  about 
the  subject.  So  he  was  employed, 
in  company  with  another  "sun- 
downer' '  to  build  a  flat  bottom  boat. 
It  is  one  of  Mr.  Bellew's  boasts 
that  the  boat  was  so  well  built  that 
it  is  still  running  on  the  waters  of 
an  Australian  stream. 

But  the  question  of  how  to  get 
back  to  England  was  still  staring 
Bellew  in  the  face.  It  was  solved 
when,  after  long  searching,  he  got 
a  berth  as  third  mate  on  a  sailing 
ship  that  was  bound  for  Liverpool. 
It  was  on  his  return  to  his  mother- 
land that  Mr.  Bellew  first  went  on 
the  stage.  He  spent  five  years  on 
the  stage  in  London — part  of  the 
time  with  Sir  Henry  Irving — and 
then  he  came  over  to  serve  as  lead- 


118   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR, 

ing  man  in  a  New  York  theater. 
His  original  contract  was  for  one 
year,  but  he  made  such  a  hit  that 
it  was  five  years  before  he  was 
released. 

Then  began  his  connection  with 
Cora  Potter — Mrs.  James  Brown 
Potter — which  lasted  for  more  than 
ten  years,  and  during  the  course  of 
which  the  two  traveled,  with  their 
company,  to  almost  every  corner  of 
the  civilized  world. 

Mr.  Bellew's  last  appearance  in 
this  country,  before  the  present 
engagement,  was  seven  or  eight 
years  ago,  when  he  and  Mrs.  Pot- 
ter and  their  company  presented 
"Charlotte  Corday"  and  other 
plays  in  Chicago  and  through  the 
"States." 

Three  or  four  times  Bellew  has 
gone  back  and  had  a  try  at  the  gold 
mines,  near  May  town,  which  he 
still  owns  in  partnership  with  Frank 
Gardner,  the  famous  Anglo-Amer- 
ican mining  millionaire,  who  has 


KYRLE  BELLEW.  119 

for  many  years  lived  in  London  and 
Paris.  Enough  has  been  done  in 
the  development  of  the  mines  to 
demonstrate  to  the  satisfaction  of 
the  owners  that  they  have  a  huge 
fortune  waiting  for  them  to  dig  it 
out  of  the  earth.  Only  the  other 
day  Mr.  Bellew  received  word  from 
Gardner  that  the  stock  of  a  com- 
pany which  has  been  organized  to 
develop  three  of  their  Maytown 
mines  has  been  floated  on  the  Lon- 
don market  and  almost  any  time 
Bellew  is  expecting  to  wake  up  and 
find  himself  a  multi-millionaire. 

All  these  years,  while  he  has 
been  appearing  on  the  stage,  Mr. 
Bellew  has  kept  up  an  active  inter- 
est as  a  mining  engineer  from  the 
New  Zealand  School  of  Mines, 
which  is  recognized  as  one  of  the 
best  institutions  of  its  kind  in  the 
world.  During  his  recent  stay  in 
New  York  Mr.  Bellew  lectured  be- 
fore the  students  at  the  school  of 
mines    connected    with   Columbia 


120   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

University,  which  he  regards  as  the 
finest  school  of  its  kind  in  the 
world,  and  it  is  anticipated  that 
before  long  he  will  take  the  exam- 
inations for  the  degree  of  M.  E. 
from  the  New  York  school.  High 
as  are  his  abilities  as  an  actor  it  is 
admitted  that  he  could  earn  a 
splendid  living  as  a  mining  expert 
at  any  time. 

His  partner,  Frank  Gardner,  is 
an  American  by  birth,  and  has  made 
millions  out  of  mines  in  both  Aus- 
tralia and  South  Africa. 
How  old  is  Kyrle  Bellew? 
The  World  Almanac  says  he  was 
born  in  London  in  1845,  which 
would  make  him  now  58  years  old. 
Mr.  Bellew  himself,  it  is  under- 
stood, confesses  to  48.  Some  of 
his  friends  are  willing  to  raise  the 
ante  to  51. 

At  any  rate  no  one  seeing  him 
on  the  stage  would  imagine  that  he 
was  on  the  shady  side  of  40.  And 
he  still  retains  to   a   large  degree 


KYRLE  BELLEW.  121 

that  handsome  profile  and  distin- 
guished bearing  which  have  made 
for  him  for  at  least  twenty  years 
one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the 
great  army  of  matinee  idols. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr.  Bellew 
is  at  present  a  reformed  matinee 
idol,  if  he  was  ever  anything  else. 
Women,  young  and  beautiful,  still 
send  him  notes  and  locks  of  their 
hair.  Sometimes  they  actually  fol- 
low him  about  the  country  from 
city  to  city.  But  it  is  all  in  vain. 
He  has  no  answering  smile  for  any 
of  the  fair  ones.  Apparently  he  is 
devoted  to  the  memory  or  to  the 
affection  of  some  mysterious  and 
unknown  lady. 

Personally,  his  habits  are  exem- 
plary. He  is  in  bed  half  an  hour 
after  the  last  curtain  falls  on  the 
"Gentleman of  France."  He  does 
not  drink,  nor  even  smoke.  Which 
is  one  reason  why,  whatever  his 
age  may  be,  he  still  looks  like  a 
man  of  35. 


122   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

Born  in  London,  the  son  of  a 
priest  of  the  church  of  England, 
Kyrle  Bellew  was  educated  at  Ox- 
ford. After  the  death  of  his  father 
his  mother  married  Lord  Elgin, who 
was  later  the  viceroy  of  India, 
which  explains  why,  when  Bellew 
and  Mrs.  Potter  went  to  India  on 
their  trip  around  the  world,  they 
were  received  in  the  highest  cir- 
cles and  made  a  tremendous  suc- 
cess, financially  and  otherwise. 
And  now,  at  the  conclusion  of  his 
present  contract  to  appear  as  a  star 
for  three  years,  he  expects  to  set- 
tle down  as  an  Australian  mining 
millionaire  in  the  great  city  of  his 
birth. 


HOW  DAVID  BELASCO  WORKS  AND 
LIVES. 


"L 


aest 


OW  life  may  inspire  high 
art."  "You  must  scratch 
your  way  through  a  moun- 
tain to  success."  "Liter- 
ature is  easy;   life  is  hard." 

' '  There  is  nothing  so  complicated 
as  simplicity." 

"When  as  a  boy  of  ten  years  I 
recited  'Curfew  Shall  Not  Ring 
To-night'  I  saw  in  my  mind's  eye 
Mrs.  Carter  playing  'The  Heart  of 
Maryland.'  " 

"The  first  money  I  ever  made  I 
made  by  selling  badges  of  General 
Grant  on  the  streets.  With  that 
$18  I  bought  two  stage  wigs.  The 
playwright  is  born,  not  made." 

"You  must  feel  before  you  can 
philosophize." 

"Nobody  can  write  a  book  on 
play  writing  that  is  worth  reading." 

"The  death  agonies  of  a  person 
poisoned  by  strychnine  are  different 


124   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

from  those  produced  by  arsenic.  I 
am  afraid  of  death,  but  have  studied 
them  both  from  life." 

"When  I  write  a  play  I  live  a 
play." 

With  two  soft  boiled  eggs,  timed 
to  three  minutes,  a  pot  of  break- 
fast tea,  and  some  toast  before  him, 
David  Belasco  sat  at  a  little  table 
in  his  room,  attired  in  pale  blue 
pajamas,  and  said:  "Really,  I'm 
a  poor  talker." 

Then  he  proceeded  in  the  course 
of  twenty  minutes'  talk  to  give 
expression  to  some  scores  of  epi- 
grams, of  which  those  quoted  above 
are  samples,  as  the  traveling  man 
says. 

After  getting  his  star  well  started, 
he  left  for  New  York.  But  nobody 
with  one  of  Belasco 's  attractions 
knows  when  he'll  get  back. 

As  likely  as  not  he  will  come 
back  unannounced.  Without  say- 
ing a  word  to  any  one,  he  will  slip 
into  the  theater  at  the  evening  per- 


DAVID    BELASCO.  125 

formance  and  watch  the  whole  show 
to  see  whether  everybody  is  keep- 
ing up  to  the  mark.  If  there  is 
any  "let  down"  a  rehearsal  will  be 
called,  and  the  "governor"  will 
bring  the  people  who  have  begun 
to  slight  their  work  to  a  realizing 
sense  of  what  he  wants.  If,  on  the 
occasion  of  one  of  these  unexpected 
visits,  he  finds  everything  going 
just  as  he  likes  he  may  take  the 
morning  train  back  to  New  York, 
and  nobody  will  be  the  wiser  for 
his  visit. 

"I  believe  first  of  all  in  simplic- 
ity. Rounded  periods  are  all  very 
well  in  books,  but  you  don't  often 
find  them  in  real  life.  Whataper- 
son  will  do  under  a  certain  set  of 
circumstances  depends  altogether 
on  the  person. 

"You  can  tell  one  man  suddenly 
that  his  mother  or  his  wife  is  dead, 
and  he  will  break  out  into  sobs, 
tear  his  hair,  and  act  like  a  mad- 
man.    You  bring  the  same  message 


126    THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

to  another  man,  and  he  will  stiffen 
himself,  keep  perfectly  quiet,  and 
only  show  his  emotion  by  lowering 
his  voice  and  clenching  his  fists. 

"Repose  may  be  high  art;  so 
may  hysteria.  It  depends  on  the 
temperament  of  the  character  you 
are  portraying.  Either  may  be 
false;  either  may  be  true.  Some 
people  have  an  idea  that  the  high- 
est art  is  always  reposeful  and 
quiet.  They  are  wrong.  It  would 
be  as  untrue  as  unartistic  to  make 
some  characters  self-controlled  and 
silent  as  it  would  be  to  represent 
a  noiseless  thunder  storm  or  an  im- 
movable earthquake. 

"Before  I  had  enough  money  to 
hire  a  stenographer  I  used  to  write 
the  dialogues  of  my  plays  seated 
before  a  mirror.  On  the  desk  be- 
fore me  I  had  a  pad  of  paper  and 
pencil.  First  I  was  one  of  the 
characters  and  then  another,  and 
what  I  felt  I  wrote  down,  using  a 
kind  of  shorthand,  so  that  my  hand 


DAVID    BELASCO.  127 

might  keep  up  with  my  changing 
feelings. 

"All  art  is  the  better  for  being 
felt  before  it  is  expressed.  No 
woman,  for  instance,  can  play  the 
part  of  a  mother  on  the  stage  with 
the  highest  art  of  which  she  is  capa- 
ble until  she  has  actually  been  a 
mother  and  experienced  the  emo- 
tions she  attempts  to  portray. 

"Now  I  have  a  couple  of  ste- 
nographers when  I  am  working  on 
a  play,  but  I  must  always  act  the 
play  as  I  go  along.  I  get  the  first 
idea  for  a  play  in  many  different 
ways.  I  have  trained  myself  to 
observe  men  and  women.  Some- 
time I  see  something  which  con- 
tains the  germ  of  a  play ;  sometimes 
I  read  something  in  the  newspapers 
which  appeals  to  me ;  sometimes  it 
is  a  bit  of  history  which  strikes  me ; 
often  I  find  myself  going  back  to 
some  experience  of  my  boyhood 
days.  I  was  an  adventuresome  and 
curious  boy.     I  was  always  peering 


128   THROUGH  THE  STAGE  DOOR. 

into  forbidden  places.  I  ran  away 
with  a  circus;  I  visited  a  gambling 
house;  I  went  to  the  morgue;  I 
hung  around  police  stations.  Now 
I  see  the  unconscious  reason  for  it 
all.  I  was  gathering  material  for 
the  plays  I  was  to  write. 

"Believe  me,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  method  of  playwriting. 
One  must  live  and  then  put  what 
he  has  lived  into  the  mouths  of  his 
actors. 

"Often  the  theater-going  public 
is  made  to  suffer  for  the  sins  or  for 
the  shortcomings  of  theatrical  man- 
agers. There  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  public  craze  for  a  certain  kind  of 
theatrical  entertainment.  A  good, 
a  first-class,  true  production  of  any 
kind  or  type  is  always  sure  of  its 
hearing.  It  is  most  often  manage- 
rial or  dramatic  inability  which  hides 
the  cheap  excuse  of  a  public  craze. 
The  sincere  and  able  artist,  be  he 
tragedian  or  what  not , may  always  be 
sure  of  his  hearing  and  of  success. 


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